Love tea? Here’s how you can grow it on your own
Tea is the most consumable non-alcoholic drink in the world. Approximately 3 million tons of tea is grown every year.
There are a lot of health benefits of drinking tea for instance drinking tea may help prevent heart conditions, strokes, and cancer.
According to the Journal of nutrition in the American diet, the tea contains the highest amount of flavonoids, which are antioxidants and fights against cancer and cholesterol.
If you are buying the tea from the supermarkets or stores, you are missing the chance to set yourself up with a continuance supply of tea that’s as natural and pure as you can make it.
If you don’t have a large garden space you can grow tea even with the small space.
There are many varieties of tea like flavored, herbal infusions and scented tea but following are four prime types of tea.
Green Tea
Black tea
Oolong tea
White tea
The above four types of tea do not come from different plant species they all come from the one plant. The above types of tea come from the plant commonly known as Camellia Sinensis. The leaves are processed by different ways that give the unique and various tastes specific taste, scent and color.
Tea cultivation
Tea cultivation doest requires a large space you can grow your tea even with the small space like your balcony or you can also grow tea inside a greenhouse or in a pot. if you really know how to grow it. Tea can easily grow everywhere but the most favorable region to grow tea in United States is the Midwest to the southern States.
This zone is commonly known as zone 8 and the area included in the zone 8 usually have the same temperature and weather patterns.
The tea plant can reach one to two meters high.
In the autumn season, you can notice white blossoms and pleasant fragrance in your tea plant because of this reason many people plant teas for decorative purpose as well. Well-drained and sandy soil is important for planting tea.
You can add sphagnum moss if you are planting your tea in a pot.
Sphagnum moss is really good for soil conditioning.
You can grow tea from the plant seeds or you can also grow tea from a plant cutting taken from existing tea plant.
You can purchase the seeds of tea easily from local nurseries.
If you are growing tea from seeds so it will take more time approximately germination takes about 4 weeks and its takes at least 3 years to get a plant that will produce leaves for harvesting.
If you are planning to grow tea from a cutting so it’s better to nourish it inside your house for at least a year before transplanting outside.
The tea plant prefers acidic soil you can buy the acidic soil to keep a tea plant healthy.
It’s also essential to maintain the acidity of soil you can maintain the appropriate level of acidity by watering the soil with soft water.
Tea plant prefers full sun, but it can also grow in the shade as well.
If you are living in a hot climate so fix your plant outside the garden in a place where it can get indirect sunlight.
If you are living in the windy area you can put it up against trees or a wall to protect your tea plant from strong winds.
It’s also essential to protect your plant from pest activities you can spray a good pesticide to protect your tea plant from harmful pests.
If you are planting many tea bushes so it’s important to put them at least 3 feet apart from each other.
Harvesting
Once you start growing tea so you have to wait first.
The harvesting of the tea takes time.
It usually takes at least 3 years.
Once your plant produced enough leaves and you found leaves are ready for the harvest, you can pick the one by one.
New leaves appear in the spring this is known as a flush pick the smallest leaves and new growth for your tea.
You can also roast your leaves in order to get a new flavor.
