tea notes

These notes are maintained by Ben Discoe.

How to grow tea in Hawai‘i?

General Resources

• There are endless resources on buying tea, brewing tea, drinking tea, selling tea, and so forth - but not on growing it.
• Magazine: Tea and Coffee Trade Journal.  Every issue has at least some information on tea production or marketing, and the articles for older issues are online.  Subscription costs $30-50/year.
• TeaUSA.org is the site for:
  • The Tea Association of the USA, Inc., The Tea Council of the USA, and the Specialty Tea Institute (STI)
  • to do: learn more about these
• The (English) Wikipedia articles on Tea (the beverage) and Camellia sinensis (the plant)
• If you can read Traditional Chinese characters (or just want to look at interesting maps and pictures) then the Professional Consultancy for Chinese Healthy Kung-Fu Tea has an amazing wealth of information.
  • Some areas are partly bilingual; we've tried  Google Translate for sometimes hilarious but often fairly close results.
• Most online resources such as startateabusiness.com ($500 for access to some educational materials, hard sell) assume you will be retailing or catering tea.
• For really big tea operations, there are international consultants such as Teacraft which can help with sourcing, growing, processing, packaging, marketing etc. but we here on the island of Hawai'i are still a bit small for that.

Hawai'i Tea Society

• The Hawai'i Tea Society (HTS) is nonprofit organization with a few dozen people.  There is no mailing list, and the forums are mostly idle.  They do schedule meetings and occasionally arrange for interesting tea presentations.
• Their site section on Growing Tea has a few good small articles.

USDA

• Tea is the focus of a USDA Hawai'i project, which doesn't seem to have a page on the USDA website, although "Investigating the Potential of Tea, Camellia sinensis, as a High Value Niche Market Crop for Hawaii:" is mentioned on AGRICULTURAL POSTHARVEST, VALUE-ADDED PRODUCTS AND PROCESSING PROGRAM, in their 2005 Annual Report
  • That report, as well as the CTAHR website, mentions that "Over 10,000 cuttings were provided from the Mealani Research Station in June 2005 to initiate their program".  Is this actually true?  Where exactly did those 10,000 cuttings go?
• The USDA station on the Big Island doing tea research is south of Hilo on the Stainback Highway.  It is component of PBARC (Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center).  Dr. Francis Zee is the Research Leader.
• USDA Tea pictures shows a rooted cutting, flower, plants and hedges in Hawai'i.
• They distribute cuttings a few times a year, see below under 'Tea Plants: Cuttings'

CTAHR

• The University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) has a tea research program.
• Program includes three tea experimental planting areas, in Volcano, Hilo, and Mealani.
• Strangely, although it's a fairly large program involving tens of thousands of plants, the CTAHR website seem to have little mention the program, or tea cultivation.
• CTAHR does have lots of great general material about Sustainable Agricultural in Hawai‘i
• Dwight Sato is the CTAHR person to contact about tea.  That's him in the tea field at Volcano to the right.
• CTAHR helped launch the annual 'Taste of the Hawaiian Range' event back in 1996; since at least 2003 it has served tea samples and tea information at the event.
• CTAHR publications on tea:
  •  PD-34 Oct. 2006: Zinc Deficiency in Tea (pdf)
  • SCM-23 March 2008: In-Ground Procedure for Rooting Tea Cuttings (must be ordered for $2)
  • IP-28 March 2008: Guide to insect and mite pests of tea (Camellia sinensis) in Hawaii (must be ordered for $3)

Books

• If you search Amazon.com for "tea cultivation", the most prominent book it finds is The Cultivation & Manufacture of Tea from 1878!
• It's amazing there is such little information about growing tea - at least in English.  Reportedly, there is plenty of tea literature out there in Japanese, Chinese, etc.  Further research did eventually turned up a couple books:

• Tea Cultivation : Comprehensive Treatise by N. Ghosh Hajra (India, 2001) 518 p., hardcover, colour photographs, ISBN 81-85860-57-2 Links for it on Vedams ($94) and Amazon ($60) I ordered this book and received it in August 2006.  It's great on history, cultivation, weeds, pests, fertilizers, and does attempt to cover the entire world of tea, with an emphasis on India.  It doesn't have any specific information about the popular Japanese and Chinese cultivars.  There is a brief chapter at the end on Organic Tea.

• Tea: Cultivation to Consumption, by K. C. Willson (UK, 1991) 768 p., hardcover, ISBN 0-412-33850-5 Link for it on Amazon UK (£277) I haven't ordered this book, which looks good, but expensive.

• There is an industry analysis, called the Tea is "Hot" Report, 6th Edition published Spring 2006.  It calls itself the "Ultimate Tea Business Reference Guidebook" and costs $800.
• CTAHR booklet: Small-scale Tea Growing and Processing in Hawaii (pdf)
  by Francis Zee, Dwight Sato, Lisa Keith, Peter Follett, and Randall T. Hamasaki, 16 pages, September 2003

Press Coverage

• Fortune Small Business, April 2007? article Tasting Hawaii about Ag Tourism, 9 pages
  • pages 5 and 6 describes an ag-tourism visit to Eva and Chiu's
• Hawaii Tribune Herald, March 20, 2007: Tea growing in Hawaii is becoming a true industry.
  • by Audrey Wilson, in the Section C Food column, includes recipe for Tea-Smoked Duck Breast
• Hawaii Island Journal, November 18-December 1, 2006: Tea Culture: Hawai'i's other brewed beverage
  • by Sonia Martinez. Mentions Eva and Chiu, Mike Riley, Mike&Rob, results of October 2006 Cupping.
• Honolulu Advertiser, October 8, 2006: Farming to be required on Kaua'i subdivision 'estates' describes more about the huge Kealanani tea project.
• Honolulu Star Bulletin, August 23, 2006: Kauai tea time: A proposed 2,021-acre development on Kauai will include a tea plantation
• Honolulu Star Bulletin, March 13 2006: Big Island trying to grow top-quality tea
• Hawaii Tribune Herald, March 5, 2006: A Spot of Tea (paid archive access only)
• BusinessWeek, September 22, 2005:  Reading the Tea Leaves in Hawaii
• Honolulu Advertiser, April 25, 2005: Hawai'i tea growers are 'learning as we go'
• Honolulu Advertiser, February 8, 2003: Hope rides on growing state's cup of tea

Tea Varieties

Tea Plants: Cuttings

• There is a real crisis of availability of plant material.  There are large government fields of tea, especially at Mealani, but distribution of cuttings from there has been held up for various reasons.
• HTS / Mealani
  • July 2006.  It sounds like HTS has finally almost lined up some volume tea cuttings for distribution!  Hooray.
  • August 2006.  A few thousand cuttings were made available from Mealani.  The HTS distribution did not turn out so well; a few people bought them all up within 2-3 days.  We didn't get any.  There is reportedly a waiting list, but no way to find out if we're on the list or not.
  • October 2006.  At the annual HTS meeting, it's is announced that:  The demand for tea cuttings was estimated at around 25,000.  The goal for 2006 was to distribute 5000.  3200 were distributed so far, with 1500 more expected in 2006.  There were 8 people on the waiting list.
  • January 1, 2007.  Announcement is made of availability of cuttings, from Mealani through HTS.  Price has soared from $1 to $2.50 per cutting, so less well off people (like us) can't afford many.  There is no mention at all of the waiting list - whether we or on it or not, apparently the list was forgotten.
• USDA Volcano Field Office also distributes branches, for making cuttings.  Every few months small batches are made available.  There is no charge, and the amount is a "small bucket".

Tea Plants: Seeds

• I tried looking online for a source of tea seeds. I am assuming that importing cuttings could be complex because we are in Hawai'i, but seeds should be OK. However, looking online didn't turn up much.
  The only company i found selling seeds online is SeedRack which:
  1. Was out of stock on tea when i visited.
  2. Lists it as just "Camellia sinensis" with no cultivar/variety name at all.
• There was an effort by a few island tea growers to do a bulk order of Assamica seeds. Specifically there appears to have been a order from Assam, and a later order from Darjeeling.
• 2006-2007: Eliah, Mel and others are working with and distributing seeds/seedlings from Darjeeling.  Eliah describes them thus:
  • "These seeds come from plants grown from the same area where the best Darjeeling has made its name. As for the origin, I cannot answer that. I am not so set on origin of plant material. The proof is in the tasting. Unless one does the DNA sampling, we are left to believe in its origin, as stated by the seller. Just the same as we are faced with the USDA issued tea.
    Genetic scrambling is good according to my resident geneticist. Just yesterday I was fertilizing one of my fields and I was talking about the variety in appearance in the USDA issued Yabukita. Incidentally, my Yabukita is not doing as well as the Benikaori and Darjeeling.
    Since our stand of tea will be small, as we are small scale tea farmers, there will be a blend of tea within our own farm. Again, this affirms my believe that the exclusivity of monoculture and the status of one origin over another will matter not once we taste what we have grown. Furthermore, keeping small isolated gene pools is risky from a sustainability perspective."
  • "The seeds were ordered from Himalayan Orchids, India. I met this fellow 3 1/2 years ago. By chance I found Himalayan Orchids on a tea search on the internet."
• March 2007: I got two flats of Darjeeling seedlings from Mel, 100 seeds in each tray.  Of those 200 seeds, around 100 were healthy young plants, 50 were germinated but getting a slow start, and 50 were duds.  That seems like a pretty good success rate.

Mealani Agricultural Research Station

• Mealani is one of the three CTAHR sites doing tea propagation and research.  It is located near Waimea at around 875m elevation with high rainfall.  Their tea is grown in a flat field of straight rows, with the soil covered by permeable ground cloth, and both irrigation and fertilizer delivered by tubing ('fertigation').  Photos by Deb from September 2006:
  
• They are doing many experiments with cultivation, propagation, etc.
  Here are some in-ground rooted cuttings, and perennial peanut ground-cover:
  
• Mealani got their 4 original cultivars (presumably 'bohea', 'yutaka midoi', 'benikaori' and 'yabukita') from the Lyon Arboretum on Oahu. It is acknowledged that the lineage of some of these cultivars may not be exact.
• Some pictures by Deb of the cultivars:

  Bohea

  Benikaori

  Chin Shin Oolong

• The head of the Ag Station, Milton Yamasaki, says they are not so concerned with specific cultivars.  They have planted a large area with hundreds with individual seeds, the genetics are randomized, and the plan is to go through the slow process of testing each promising plant, producing rows of cuttings from them, and developing new Hawaii-specific cultivar(s) with unique attributes.
• Reportedly, they've made good tea out of almost all the plants at Mealani, even one batch made out of the randomized field of plants! Milton says other indicators and advice from tea experts has not held up, e.g. the plants with reddish tint to their leaves should have made an inferior tea, but in fact made a superior tea to the light greenish bushes. In other words, it's all wide open and full of new possibilities.
• "Bohea" is a particularly ambiguous cultivar designation.  There is no tea industry description of it; nobody has ever heard of it.  (Maybe we could hunt down someone at Lyon who would know more.)  Both Mealani and some HTS members have found "Bohea" to grow more healthy and vigorous than other cultivars. But, Milton says that the tea they made from "Bohea" was not so great, until they blended it with some other tea from down near Volcano, and the resulting blend was very good.

Big Island Tea Growers

Other Islands: Kauai

• The Kealia area on Kaua'i has a large tea operation planned (see above under 'Press Coverage')
• kealanani.com is their website.  It has a few paragraph about their planned tea.  A 'Kauai Tea Company' will be formed which then works with each of the residents that will grow the tea.
• Not many other details are public yet.  According to a consulting working with them, they are bringing in live plant material from Africa and plan to begin planting 2007.  The local partner (Andy Friend, Kealanani project manager) is also a member of the HTS.  Encouragingly, they see it as the more tea growers in Hawaii the better for the industry, so there should be plenty of opportunity to be open and help each other.
• December 2007, New York Times article says: "Final approval from County came in Sept., 47 lots went on sale, 15 are now under contract."  It includes a picture labeled 'Workers tend to green tea crops as Kealanani".  Apparently they are scraping away the surface, and using white plastic and irrigation tubes:
  

Sellers

• As of 2007, it seems so far that Big Island growers have been selling their (small to date) output directly, although there are reports that the Bibbitea Bobbitea Brew tea store on Oahu has carried some Big Island tea.  TeaRoomsHawaii contains a list of tea stores in the state.

Tea Tourism

• Hawai'i Community College, Hawai`i Island Educational Explorations -- Volcano
  • "We offer you and your family an educational exploration of our volcano area. [...] You will also be ushered into a dreamlike world where a tea garden exists and share in the pleasures of a Chinese Tea Ceremony. [...]. The fare for the national park tour, visit to a tea garden with tea ceremony, chef cooking demonstration, and lunch is $96.00 per person. Thursdays 8:15 a.m.—3:30 p.m. or by appointment."
  • Is this the TeaHawaii.com folks?

Planting

• Reportedly, tea doesn't mind being on a hill, so there is no need to terrace steep land.  The main reason to smooth the land is to make it physically easier for people to do the cultivating, weeding/mowing, etc.
• reference says:
  • Based on style of planting:

    Up and down:	1.2 x 1.2 m (6800 plants/ha)
    Contour planting, single hedge:	1.2 x 0.75 m (10,800 plants/ha)
    Contour planting, double hedge:	1.35 x 0.75 x 0.75 m (13200 plants/ha)

  • The double hedge planting will accommodate more number of plants per unit area. Early high yield, better soil conservation, less weed growth, efficient cultural practices and better supervision are other advantages of double hedge planting.
  • Pits of size 30 x 45 cm. Keep the top and bottom soil separately. In clayey soil and drought-prone areas, deeper pits (60 cm) or trench planting will be advantageous. Planting hole of 45 cm wide and 75 cm depth are better for establishment of young plants.
• Example for half an acre, with contour planting: 0.5 acre = 0.2 hectare, at around 10000 plant/ha, that's 2000 plants

Harvesting and Processing

• There are basically two ways to harvest tea: by hand, or by machine.  Since the finest teas are hand-picked and Hawaii pretty much has to produce fine tea to find its niche, it's assumed that most people here will take that route.  However, that's surely going to require a lot of labor.  Are each of the small growers current hand-picking?  Are they hand-picking at the CTAHR fields at Mealani and Volcano?
• There is an experimental processing facility in Mealani as of Fall 2005, with some rolling and drying machines.
• Some videos on O-cha.com "for those interested in the finer details of Japanese green tea", shows harvesting and machine processing mostly, with some brief footage of hand processing.

Soil and Fertilizer

• Most of the following is my understanding from Chapters 5 ("Tea soils") and 10 ("Mineral nutrition") of the Hajra book, along with information from UH CTAHR and Hawaiian USDA people.
• Acidity
  • In general, tea likes an acidic soil, which is generally what Hawai'i has - especially in Hamakua.
  • It is often reported that pH of 5.0 to 5.5 is good, although "vigorous growth of tea has been reported even at a pH of 3.2"!
  • If it's too far below 5.0, it's recommended to add some lime to bring pH up a bit.
• N / P / K
  • At Mealani, they've had lots of rapid growth by applying very large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer via fertigation.
  • It's been mentioned that you don't want to give tea too much Phosphorus, because it encourages the plant to flower, rather than grow leaves.
  • Generally, horse/cow/goat manure should be better than chicken manure, because chicken manure has a lower ratio of N/P.
• Compost
  • Hawaiian soils are generally lacking in many ways, including nutrients, humus and soil structure.  So, adding compost would seem to be a natural step.  However, reportedly with tea, "the USDA has experienced some problems with compost." 
  • What problems may occur, or at what phase of the plant's life compost could pose an issue?
  • CTAHR reports: "There may be an issue of newly planted tea plants not growing. It seems that once the plants are acclimated and vigor established, it's ok to add compost. The verdict is not completely out as of yet but we are offering caution at this time."
  • Dr. Zee of USDA reports: "During out initial dealing with rooted tea cuttings, we had difficulties when we added well composted macadamia husks into the soil as an amendment. We had much better results when the cuttings were planted directly into cane wash soil alone. Once the plants were established, compost can be good as a side dress, not touching the trunk. You probably have to do some testing at your site to see how suitable compost can be used as a soil amendment."
• Minerals
  • Besides pH and N/P/K, what minerals does tea need to grow well and be high quality?
  • The Hajra book says the limiting nutrients for high production are, in order: "N, P, K, Zn, Mg, Si, MO, B+liming"
  • Zinc (Zn): It's well known that a zinc deficiency commonly causes problems for tea.  The CTAHR publication PD-34 Oct. 2006: Zinc Deficiency in Tea (pdf) shows a picture of zinc deficiency and says you can add zinc either directly as a mineral amendment, and "Poultry and swine manure are good organic sources of zinc".  A lot of countries apply zinc as a foliar spray.
  • Magnesium (Mg): It's complex. Tea in some parts of the world got no benefit from adding Mg, some places did, and there's some interaction between Mg and K in the soil.  In places with very acidic soil, where dolomitic lime is added, that provides some Mg.
  • Sulfur (S): Tea needs it, but it shouldn't be a problem.  A small amount of manure, compost or other natural fertilizers seem to contain all the sulfur tea may need.
  • Calcium (Ca): Most phosphate fertilizers contain large amount of calcium, so conventional tea growers usually don't worry about calcium.  However, this may not be true for organic farming?  Many Hawaiian soils in wet areas are low in calcium due to millennia of leaching out from rainfall.
• Azomite seems to be a good source of many of the trace elements needed, including calcium.
  •  But, as of 2007-2008, it is usually out of stock on the Big Island ag supply stores.
• Kelp Meal is one likely alternative to Azomite, although it apparently usually costs 50% more.
• How about local (Big Island) sources of fertilizer?  See page on Hawai'i Agriculture Notes

Pests and Diseases