i think it’d be really cool to have one or two tea plants as a novelty. i definitely wouldn’t be able to get my tea exclusively from my own garden, but whatever. it’s cool!!! i also really like the concept of terroir—and how tea/coffee/wine/anything tastes different depending on where it’s grown. i’d just love to experiment with that sort of thing
How to grow my own tea
How I did it:
- Purchased seeds off ebay.
- Carefully filed down the hard 'shell' on the seeds.
- Planted in acidic compost
- Kept damp but not wet for about a month
- Watered the resulting plants and waited for just over a year.
- Picked outer leaves, made tea!
Lessons & tips:
- Get seeds a fresh as possible and pland ASAP
- The germination period is long and the seeds are prone to rot, so keep just moist and you can use copper based antifungal if you want.
- Tea prefurs acidic soil, so get 'lime free' compost.
- Don't pick leaves until the plant is big enough and then you can pick the leaves and buds to keep it the desired size / shape.
- For green tea steam then dry leaves in low oven immediatly.
- For black tea roll the leaves after picking and leave to oxidise , longer = darker tea, short time --> oolong tea, then dry in low oven.
People doing this are also doing these things:
Entries
specialsocks is a ninja
http://coffeetea.about.com/od/preparation/a/growingtea.htm
I think i could do this :)


