eggs & tea

On our island, there is a shortage of tea plants. The Tea Society has only been able to find a very small number of baby plants (mired in controversy, but that’s another story..) so we tea growers are faced with a dilemma. Just wait for known cultivars to become available, slowly building up plants over years? Or also propagate everything we can find, even if it is random seeds, or plants from people’s yards that are totally unknown? When dealing with unknown tea, it might be great, it might be lousy, but it will take a few years for the plants to get big enough to taste and find out.

Last year, i asked around the neighborhood, and our immediate neighbor Theresa Lee said she had some tea bushes. She pointed out into her yard, and i saw only tall grass… finally staring, i could see some tea there. Since then, i have come by occasionally to clear and mulch the three tea plants:

They are each very different. I have named them L1, L2, and L3. L2 is very beautiful, small vivid green leaves with strongly serrated edges. L3 is growing the most vigorously, with many wild branches needing a pruning. So today, i cut L3′s tallest branches and made 47 cuttings:

Now there is just the years of tending and waiting to find out if it makes good tea!

Related posts:

1. More mystery tea bushes Our neighbor Peter of Star of Roses Organic Farm told...
2. Tea update, planting and propagating There’s been lots of progress on the tea recently. Lots...
3. Propagating tea cuttings Today i did some major updates to my online notes...
4. The Ookala Tea Tree Today Jim and i made a trip to our friend’s...
5. First big pruning of the tea field This long wet winter has been great for the tea. ...

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 6:29 pm and is filed under tea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.