Tea Cultivation

China’s long history and expensive area for tea cultivation have been given rise to numerous tea plant species, and Chinese tea growers and producers have accumulated an abundance of experience over a prolonged course of experimentation. The dazzling assortment of tea varieties emerging as a result always impresses people by there ingenious processing techniques, fine quality and exquisite flavors.

Tea Cultivation

It took a long time for the ancient Chinese to progress from gathering tea leaves in the wild to the first attempt of grow tea plants themselves. According to the Tong Jun Lu written in the later Eastern Han Dynasty, there were already five or sex tea-producing area in China. Wu Lizhen, a man of the preceding Western Han Dynasty, was said to have “Planted eight divine tea bushes” on Mount Menshan, Sichuan, and was regarded as the first people to manage to cultivate tea in China.

Lu Yu of Tang Dynasty wrote in The Classic of Tea: “As far as soil is concerned, the best (tea) grows among mushy rock, mediocre gritty soil, and the worst yellow earth”. The most desirable soil for tea plants’ growth, Lu believed, is “mushy rock” by which he meant soil produced by weathered Paleozoic rock, sand stone and slate. Modern science holds that acidic soil, red or yellow in color, and with a pH between 4.5 and 6.5, renders the most beneficial soil conditions for the growth of tea bushes.

Tea was grown directly from individual seeds in the Tang Dynasty, but in the Ming Dynasty people start to sow several seeds together in one hole, and then raise tea plants by transplanting the mature clusters of shoots. This technique known as layerage, was first used in tea cultivation in Fujian Province, but exactly when it was initiated is not known. Today tea farms are managed following requirement of modern science, including choose a beneficial ecological environment, planning the use of land, constructing drainage and irrigation system and facilities to prevent soil erosion, planting windbreaks and sun-screening trees, plowing the soil, choosing tea plant species, sowing the seeds or raising cutting and then transplanting them and using the close-planting strategy as appropriate.