Clearing

Less common now than in the pioneering days, a sloping hillside is cleared of trees and scrub for planting with tea. The heavy timber, often valuable, is removed and the remaining cutting is burnt off, the resulting ash helping fertilize the soil.

Preparation

In preparation for planting, the land must be surveyed, ‘lined’ to mark the future position of each bush, drained and ‘holed’ to receive the plants. Proper drainage is vital; the ideal is a clean runoff with a minimum of erosion.

Planting

Originally grown from seed, either in situ or at a nursery, tea is now reproduced by vegetative propagation or ‘cuttings’. The traditional pattern of planting, with bushes arranged in geometrical clusters, was superseded in the 1960s by contour planting that closely follows the line of the hillside. Trees are planted amid the tea to provide partial shade and further control soil erosion.

Weeding

Early planters weeded their fields clean, losing tons of topsoil with every shower of rain. Today, only weeds that can harm the tea are picked, the rest left in to help ‘bind’ the soil. Topsoil loss remains a problem, however; how to overcome it is a subject of much controversy, study and experiment at Sri Lanka’s national Tea Research Institute and elsewhere.

Fertilization

While the proportion of organically-produced Ceylon Tea harvested increases annually to keep pace with demand, conventionally-grown teas must also pass the Tea Board’s stringent rules on chemical content. This not only results in a safer and healthier product, but also helps protect the environment.

Pruning

Tea-bushes, like vines, respond well to periodic mutilation. Pruning, which begins before the plant is mature enough for plucking, is repeated every couple of years thereafter, causing the bush to grow horizontally instead of vertically. Performed using a special knife, pruning is a strenuous and difficult manual operation that resists automation. Human skill is an essential part of the process.

Plucking

Picking the tea, or ‘plucking’ as it is known in the trade, continues all year round, though different regions produce their best teas at different times of the year due to the climatic variations associated with them. The pluckers, mostly women, restrict themselves to the two tenderest leaves and the ‘bud’ that grow at the very top of every stem. Coarser picking results in poor-quality tea.