towards actually sustainable farming in Ahualoa
Tons of work got done during the 3 weeks there, including: Took down and partly processed 6 very large cypress trees above the tea field Started new long-term compost pile Planted several dozen new tea plants, mostly Y/Y cultivars Lots of wood moving and splitting Re-built the char pit with real firebrick, which should last …
I’ll be back on the island from August 24 – September 15 – to work on the farm, plant tea plants, split firewood, make compost, make biochar, and experiment with lots of cool stuff like making native bricks and larger and better biochar production techniques. I’ve also just bought a GoPro and Steadicam so i …
More about growing tea with biochar in Sri Lanka, from an eariler comment on this blog. 1. “Biochar: Can it put the tea industry back in the black?”, Dr. J.C. Krishnaratne, http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120624/business-times/biochar-can-it-put-the-tea-industry-back-in-the-black-3850.html In summary, it says that the Sri Lanka tea fields are in bad shape due to erosion and long-term overuse of chemical fertilizers, …
I spent the month of September 2011 back on the farm, getting it into shape and making batches of biochar. At the end of the month i took a truckload of the char down to Josiah’s biochar operation in Puna, where it was inoculated and ground up. Back at the farm, the living char was …
The farm is in a very rural, remote location – which is why it’s so surprising that Google actually got around to driving the neighborhood – but they did. You can even see the bottom part of our tea field clearly from the road, since the camera on the Google van is a bit higher …
The full name of the document is “Specialty Crops for Pacific Island Agroforestry: Farm and Forestry Production and Marketing Profile for Tea (Camellia sinensis)”. It’s online at agroforestry.net (or directly to the PDF). I contributed a bit to the document, with some reviewing, an illustration of using ginger as a mulch, and some notes on …
It’s been a long time since we’ve blogged about tea. The field has been growing exceedingly well, particular in the wet wet weather which stayed wet until mid-April this year. Tea loves rain! Our February 22 harvest, a full-bodied oolong, was announced on facebook and did well. The May 1 harvest experienced difficult conditions, surprisingly …