You may recall from my previous posts big new batch, and after 1 month.  It’s now been nearly 3 months, and here’s the breakdown.  Here’s what was left in the trays today:

Of the 424 cuttings:
20 have produced some visible roots.  I have potted them up.
32 remain in limbo; not obviously dead, but no visible roots either.
392 were culled, for dying, clearly not rooting, or making only a rootball.

Here’s all that survives from tray 3Y, 7 with some root, 2 with rootballs:

This is rather frustrating.  Granted, this batch was meant as an experiment, rooted 6 different ways to see what works.  And that breakdown on the survival rate is:
in oasis cubes: 19%
in potting soil: 9%
in soil/manure: 0%
For choice of dip:
with Dip’n’grow: 8%
with hydrogen peroxide: 5%

The success rates are so low that i’m not sure how much to read into the results.  The ones with roots don’t have much leaf growth either, which in the past has meant it won’t survive all the way into the field.  So, roughly estimating that only 50% of pottings like these will make it:

then the overall success rate (excluding the soil/manure) will be 6%.  My previous best result, from Eliah’s branches, produced 25 plants in the ground, from 255 cuttings (10% success), and they took a full 8 months to all leave limbo, from October 2006 to June 2007.

<Sigh>  It seems like i’ve tried every single way – in soil, in cubes, with powdered root hormone, liquid root hormone, partial shade, heavy shade, outdoors on a table, inside a greenhouse, watering, misting.  I’ve made cuttings with 1, 2, 3, 4 nodes.  I’ve cut precisely the section between brown and green wood that should do best.  I’ve inserted the cuttings straight up, and at an angle.  I’ve studied the chapter in the Tea textbook from India.  I’ve taken instruction from Aileen, gone home to try it, and they almost all die.  I’ve followed the Mealani published shade-house instructions precisely, and they almost all die.

I really wish there was someone i could go to for advice or help.  But the Tea Society doesn’t do that, CTAHR doesn’t do that.  There’s not even a mailing list to ask for help, because HTS wouldn’t allow it.  It’s frustrating, but i will not be deterred!  I will grow a field of tea one way or another, and keep looking for ideas.  Have any?

After adding the plastic sheet over the structure, as expected, both temperature and humidity have gone WAY up:

Compared with before, humidity range has gone from 40%-90% to nearly 98% almost all the time, only dipping slightly on hot days.  The dew point is now exactly the same as temperature, which can spike hotter, over 40ºC on some days.  I have no idea how this will be for the tea, but it certainly looks happy in there, the tender green shoots are not wilting, despite the heat.  One day, i also discovered a toad happily lounging in a square pot, i guess a moist place to hide during the day is perfect:

Here is the results after one month, the percentage of each test case that still appears alive:

Overview:

1. Every single cutting in the soil/manure mix died.
2. The dip’n’grow vs. peroxide cuttings are doing about the same.
3. The potting soil is keeping the cuttings green and alive looking, but i think they aren’t actually rooting.

I bought a small temperature/humidity logger, and clipped it inside the tent.  Here is a typical 11-day period in September, while the cuttings were being misted a few times each day to keep them moist:

As you can see, temperature can dip down to 11ºC at night or spike up to 35ºC on hot days. Humidity it pretty much the inverse of temperature, around 92% at night, dropping as low at 40% on hot days. But the article on the HTS website says: “Propagation of tea plants needs a facility where constant temperature 23-29ºC and humidity (80%) are maintained.”  Daytime temperature seems OK, but nighttime is way outside this range, and humidity is almost never close to 80%.

Today i bought a 8×20′ piece of plastic to cover the tent, following Mealani’s shade tent instructions.  They said to add this cover for the second month, so that’s what i’m going to try.

I saw this blurb on the Onion recently which made me laugh.  I am putting a lot of work and passion into our tea field.  Why are we, as highly educated members of a developed nation, so eager to do the sort of work which is relegated to peasants in poor parts of the world? I do hope that some day our tea makes the world a better place, in a small way.  True, you can’t (really) eat tea.  But good tea, the kind we hope to make, is more than about what the Onion blurb says, growing caffeine or antioxidants.  The way i am beginning to see things, tea can be a holistic experience, the fulfillment it brings may be beyond scientific analysis.

Last time i wrote about cuttings, i concluded that there are many other ideas to try, which might have a better success rate.  Today, i finished setting up a major new test, with 6 different combinations, in a shade structure very much like the Mealani paper describes.

I made the structure out of scrap metal, some bamboo from the land, a bit of hog wire, twist ties, and shade cloth.  It is around 10 feet long.  Mealani said 80% shade cloth, i had 55%, so i added a stripe of solid ground cloth to the top, to get the necessary darkness.  I didn’t go through the trouble of buying and installing mist-irrigation tubing, so for now it will have be misted by hand, every day.

Going out into the tea field, i found that a hundred plants needed major pruning, so there was lots of branches for cutting material.  There was even two buckets left over, and more plants in the field that still need more pruning.

Three different media: oasis cubes, potting mix, and a topsoil/manure/potting combo. Two different dips: Dip’n’Grow, and hydrogen peroxide. That’s 6 different combinations, times 2 cultivars (Beni/Bohea, Yabu/YM) is 12 trays, a total of 424 cuttings.  Deb helped to dip and stick the cuttings, all together it took around 5 hours to prune, clip, dip and stick.

I also bought a small gadget which records and logs temperature and humidity.  You then bring it to a computer with USB and see the data.  I’m curious what the conditions are going to be like inside the shade structure, especially in the hot afternoon and cold night.