Has anyone tried growing your own tea? What were your experiences? Is it a worthwhile endeavor?
Growing your own tea?
- Thread starter DamnFineBob
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You'd have to be in a place that's rather cool, with lots of rain and great drainage. Plus you'd have to have a large farm for at least five years to get enough tea to drink a lot of it. Adagio has a program where you "adopt" a tea plant and you'll eventually get some tea from that farm, supposedly from "your" tree.
There is an old thread on the Tea Chat forum about growing tea. As I recall, growing it for consumption is difficult. But there is a decorative variety that can grown more easily.
And getting it to grow doesn't mean it'll be good to drink.
I grew Brussles Sprouts that a hazmat team had to dispose of.
Often there is a trick or two that the producers know that we don't.
I've never heard of anyone growing tea for consumption.
Interesting thought though.
I suspect so, but even then, the environment plays such a role as well.
Anybody ever seen Tom's "Finca West Oakland" coffee growing experiment?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kvpwYw6u0U
I'm training monkeys to pick oolong as we speak.
Yeah, I grow my own ... oh, uhm ... tea you say?
Nevermind.
Nevermind.
I grew Brussles Sprouts that a hazmat team had to dispose of.
I've thought for a long time that all Brussels Sprouts should be disposed of using a hazmat team. But that's just me...
I walked into some fancy schmancy tea store in a mall the other day (was desperate for tea and every damn shop within 100 miles of me was closed on Tuesdays for some reason). They had "Monkey Oolong". I scoffed at the story of monkeys picking it, but the young lady behind the counter was quite insistent, that at the very least, monks USED to train monkeys to pick their tea for them. Yep and the first tea tree sprouted out from Buddha's eyelids when he severed them to prevent himself falling asleep during meditation. I'm not saying it couldn't be done. Maybe one or two crazy monks did it for a laugh, but it's just impractical to do it for regular consumption. My guess is that the monks liked to see what the dumb visitors would believe and maybe had a monkey or two that was all too happy to run up a tree and grab a few leaves now and then for a treat.
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I'm with you but I had to search the net for more information.
Found this monkey drinking tea:
These monkeys picking tea:
And a real article about it on ArtofTea:
Monkey Picked Tea Revealed
Tregothnan Tea Plantation in Cornwall England
Above is the website of a place in England that actually has made production quantities of tea. It is really more of a novelty than a viable source of england's tea needs.
If you have a the right climate, it might be fun to grow a tea plant, but I would harbor no thoughts of getting a nice supply of delicious home brew from it.
Above is the website of a place in England that actually has made production quantities of tea. It is really more of a novelty than a viable source of england's tea needs.
If you have a the right climate, it might be fun to grow a tea plant, but I would harbor no thoughts of getting a nice supply of delicious home brew from it.
Having driven through commercial tea plantation they can make nice hedges. My wife, a filipino, says they used to have a tea plant at her home and they brewed it up. It can be done, but I don't know about how well your climate is for the plants. Some missionaries I know tried planting sweet corn in the Cameroonian highlands. They always turned out stunted cobs with horrendously incomplete fertilization. They found out later that sweet corn needs a good few 16 hour days to properly mature. Unfortunately, Cameroon being so close to the equator effectively had 12 hour days year round. I tell you that story so you realize there may be many factors, even beyond the sun, as to why this will fail for you, but give it a try you just might succeed.
Rick
Rick
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