There’s been lots of progress on the tea recently. Lots of planting going on, including one big push on Nov. 12 when i was able to hire two guys, and we did around 40 plants in 6 hours. As of today, there are 172 total plants in the ground! The soil amendments have evolved, the current mix is equal parts mature compost and sifted horse manure, with small amount of azomite, organic 6-6-6, and greensand.

Getting them into the ground is important because in the greenhouse, they just don’t do well; they seldom root, and even if they do, after a burst of growth they start dying. I’ve written before about the dismal (~20% at best, ~2% typical) success rate i’ve had with starting cuttings. On some advice, i tried two trays of cuttings, inserted at an angle, in 50% shade. This is the result:

Yup, that’s only about 7 still barely alive. There must be something about rooting that i am really not doing right. Is it the soil, the temperature, the root hormone, the humidity? Fortunately i’ve been able to buy a few more rooted cuttings from Aileen, and this week, for the first time, i was able to take some branches from our own plants(!) and start cuttings. Following the professional horticulturist’s lead, i am trying them in oasis root cubes:

I hope rooting in the cubes work better than soil!