{"id":59,"date":"2008-04-16T00:41:24","date_gmt":"2008-04-16T10:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/?p=61"},"modified":"2010-10-25T19:53:31","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T05:53:31","slug":"tea-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/2008\/04\/tea-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tea planting continues slow and steady. We&#8217;re trying to keep costs low, only buying a few rooted cuttings on occasion. There are around 250 plants in the ground.<\/p>\n<p>My greenhouse tea are doing better than ever before.  Here are a few things i found, over the past year, that seem to help them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spraying dilute <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neem_oil\">neem oil<\/a> (&#8220;bio-pesticide for organic farming&#8221;).   Aphid and scale problems seem to be gone.\u00a0 Even the mite-infested cuttings i got did not spread or cause any trouble.<\/li>\n<li>No compost in the potting mix. For whatever reason (pH? tannins?) the baby tea doesn&#8217;t like it. Dunno what&#8217;s up with my compost, i will be testing it.<\/li>\n<li>More fertigating, primarily with dilute fish emulsion, and now also a little kelp meal. Apparently over-fertilizing is less of an issue than under-fertilizing &#8211; you can lay on the nitrogen, even for baby tea plants.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is how my rooted tea cuttings looked a while back, when they were just potted:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/bdiscoe\/TeaPlantation\/photo#5189790445952677378\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/bdiscoe\/TeaPlantation\/photo#5189790445952677378\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/bdiscoe\/SAXW6fW5tgI\/AAAAAAAAAcw\/n7aWybbo6rY\/s288\/DSC02521.JPG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Six weeks later, half of them are big and ready to go into the ground.\u00a0 That&#8217;s better growth than i&#8217;ve ever had before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tea planting continues slow and steady. We&#8217;re trying to keep costs low, only buying a few rooted cuttings on occasion. There are around 250 plants in the ground. My greenhouse tea are doing better than ever before. Here are a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/2008\/04\/tea-update\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}