Pruning.—Aside perhaps from differ ences of individual opinion in the pro cesses of manufacture, there is no subject on which tea-growers present greater divergence of views (and few can resist the temptation to rush into print thereon) than on pruning. The necessity of prun ing lies in the evergreen character of the tea plant and its arborescent tendency under favor able conditions of growth. Ordinarily, after the bush has attained a medium size the production of young leaf is small, but withal the growth upward would soon extend beyond the reach of the pluckers. Hence, both to facilitate the gathering of leaf and to stimulate the production of young growth by forcing nature to its utmost effort to restore the natural equilibrium between the roots, stems and leaves, the tea-planter deprives the bush of a greater or less quantity of the leaves, which constitute not only its lungs but also the physiological laboratory wherein the material for future growth is perfected. Usually it is not necessary during the first few years more than to trim the plant into proper shape, and afterward to cut back (in this climate, after the severest cold of the winter) the growth of the past season to within a few inches of the older wood. But this limitation does not suffice for the purposes already stated, and it becomes necessary every five or ten years to subject the bushes to a more vigor ous pruning, perhaps to the very ground. Finally, where the winter temperature is liable to drop below 20° Fahr., it is advisable to substitute a clump or sucker-growth for the single-stem bushes Of tropical climates, if necessary by the removal of the main trunk, thus providing protection from the cold to the tenderer stems.
As a result of pruning, at the axis of every remaining leaf there appears a tiny shoot which speedily develops into a new stem equipped with several leaves. From the axis of each of these latter springs yet another shoot which under favor able conditions gives rise to another crop of leaf. These successive productions of young foliage are called "flushes," whose rapidity of recurrence depends on climate, soil and systems of cultivation and plucking. They afford the tea-planter the opportunity of gathering the young and tender leaf at frequent intervals throughout the growing season. The fact that upwards of twenty pluckings have been made at Pinehurst during the six months of cropping is due to the picking of only a small modicum of leaf from each new shoot, and the consequent readiness with which young foliage is produced. A large part of the world's tea is the result of a practical stripping of all the leaves and a good part of the stem ; but as such deple tion removes the embryonic shoots in the axes of the leaves, the power of reproduction is greatly diminished.
Plucking and produclion.—The plucking of leaf begins with a small topping during the first year after transplanting, and under favorable conditions should exhibit a progressive increment for a number of years. The following table shows the early croppings, expressed in pounds of dry tea per acre, of several sorts of tea on naturally fertile lands : A comparison of the production of some older gardens, also expressed in pounds of dry tea per acre, since the phenomenal freeze of the spring of 1899, affords the following : The plucking of the leaf generally extends in this climate from the beginning of May until into October, and is confined to the pekoe tip and leaves.
The colored children who gather the young leaves as they are successively produced have occasion to revisit each garden every ten days to two weeks during the season. By careful training they become expert in their task, and easily equal, if not sur pass, the average tea-pluckers of the Orient. But constant supervision as to their thoroughness is requisite not only in the gardens but also at the delivery of the leaf at the factory.
The vitality of the tea plant, under favorable conditions, successfully overcomes the strenuous incursions of the pruner and plucker. Abundant proof has demonstrated that the same plant can be thus depleted for twenty-five to fifty years, without serious impairment ; indeed, it is asserted that in one Japanese garden the same bushes have yielded high-grade leaf for two hundred years. The irregu larities in the productiveness of the older gardens, as shown in the above table, are preeminently due to meteorological variations. The greater yield of 1902 was probably due to unusually high tempera tures, the thermometrical readings having exceeded 100° Fahr. on several days.
Curing and handling.
If it is remembered that all tea-leaf must be subjected to two processes, viz., rolling, to break the oily cells which contain the principles valuable for brewing the beverage and to spread them on the surface of the leaves, and drying, to prevent fermentation and decay ; that leaf thus prepared constitutes green tea, the nearest approach to the natural condition; and that the introduction of two additional processes,—withering of the green leaf, and oxidation, by exposure, after rolling, of the damp leaf to the atmospheric air, produces black tea, it will be readily seen how large an opportunity has been given for substituting mechanical for the old-time hand (and naked foot) processes of the far Orient. Indeed, at the present up-to-date tea factory, manual labor has been restricted to that final culling which removes objectionable leaf and adventitious matter.
Intelligently to describe the many machines now in use, should necessarily consume too much time and space, but it may be permitted to refer to two useful ones invented at Pinehurst: The green-tea sterilizer consists of a rotary cylinder which satisfactorily sterilizes the "en zymes" or soluble oxidizing ferments in the freshly plucked leaf, by directing a current of hot air (550° to 600° Fahr.) against it as it falls for several hundred times through the diameter of the tube on its passage through the length of the latter, until it is discharged in a flaccid condition, suitable for rolling and no longer liable to oxidize.