{"id":60,"date":"2008-04-28T13:14:09","date_gmt":"2008-04-28T23:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/?p=62"},"modified":"2008-09-10T00:30:08","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T10:30:08","slug":"tea-trouble-tree-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/2008\/04\/tea-trouble-tree-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea trouble: tree roots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My tea in the field is growing very irregularly, and i can’t figure out why. Some plants are healthy and growing great, others not. In some cases, it is the same cultivar, planted at the same time, in the same soil and the same amendments – yet one plant is booming and the one next to it is barely alive.<\/p>\n

I got one possible clue, when i dug up a failing tea plant, to replace it. The soil around the failed plant was totally full of tree roots. I’m not sure exactly what tree it is. There were a couple mystery trees in this field that i chopped down before planting, and a koa and an avocado which are in the same field but probably too far to be responsible. Take a close look, the failed tea was completely choked:<\/p>\n

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I didn’t think tree roots would be a problem, because i’ve heard of tea being “shade grown” in other parts of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the species of tree matters.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe these particular tree roots are allelopathic to tea plants.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe i didn’t dig a big enough hole when i planted in this spot the first time.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the roots of the dead stump nearby are still growing?\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it’s not the roots themselves, but something related or indirect like an elevated population of nematodes due to the dead tree’s roots.\u00c2\u00a0 Agriculture is so complicated with so many unknowns!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My tea in the field is growing very irregularly, and i can’t figure out why. Some plants are healthy and growing great, others not. In some cases, it is the same cultivar, planted at the same time, in the same … Continue reading →<\/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-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","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=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}