The Cultivation and Manufacture of TeaMoney, Edward
Science
The Cultivation and Manufacture of Tea
Money, Edward
Tea
In laying out a garden, choose a central spot with water handy for
your factory, bungalow, and all your buildings; let your Tea-houses
be as close to your dwelling-house as possible, so that during the
manufacturing time you can be in and out at all hours of the day
and night. Much of your success will depend upon this. Let all your
buildings be as near to each other as they can, but still far enough
apart, that any one building may burn without endangering others. You
need not construct any Tea-buildings until the third year.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] A garden I have just finished in the Western Dooars is 300 acres
in extent, all on flat land without any breaks in the cultivation, and
all divided into sections of 5 acres each. Being in one large block it
is not divided into gardens at all, only sections.
CHAPTER IX.
VARIETIES OF THE TEA PLANT.
These are many, but they all arise from two species: the China
plant, the common Tea-bush in China; and the indigenous plant, first
discovered some forty years ago in Assam.
These are quite different species of the same plant. Whether the
difference was produced by climate, by soil, or in what way, no one
knows, and here we have only to do with the facts that they _do_ differ
in every respect. A purely indigenous plant or tree (for in its wild
state it may more properly be called the latter) grows with one stem
or trunk, and runs up to 15 and 18 feet high. It is always found in
thick jungle, and would thus appear to like shade. I believe it does
when young; but I am quite sure, if the jungle were cleared round an
indigenous Tea-tree found in the forest, it would thrive better from
that day. The China bush (for it is never more) after the second year
has numerous stems, and 6 or 7 feet would seem to be its limit in
height. The lowest branches of a China plant are close to the ground,
but in a pure cultivated indigenous, from 9 inches to 1 foot above the
soil the single stem is clean.
The indigenous grows quicker after the second or third year than the
China, if it has not been over-pruned or over-plucked when young. In
other words, it flushes quicker, for flushing is growing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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