Tea plants can grow in the wild by themselves with no human intervention whatsoever. To produce tea, that we enjoy so much, however, some level of human involvement is necessary: be it simply picking leaves from the tea plants or tending to the tea plants more rigorously. Here we will talk about the tea plant management throughout its life span as well as yearly tea farming activities common in modern day farming.

Tea Plant Management
If left be, tea plants can live for a long time – even over a thousand years (as some tea plants found in China). For commercial production in Japan, though, they are usually planted and replanted approximately about every 40-50 years. Within the lifespan of a tea plant tea farmers plant, maintain and replant the tea plants in their fields.

Propagation

Tea plants can propagate and spread by themselves – simply by producing tea seeds. It is tea farmers these days that decide where the most optimal place for the new tea field is. In early days tea plants were simply propagated from the tea seeds – tea farmers would collect the tea seeds and would plant them in the new tea field.

Nowadays in Japan tea plants are mostly propagated from the cuttings. A cutting is a small part of a branch (normally a new shoot), that usually has one tea leaf on it. The branch is placed in soil and over time it starts to develop roots. When a cutting has developed some roots and branches (usually after 1-2 years) it is replanted into its permanent field.

Why to propagate tea plants from cuttings, you might say. These days most of the tea in Japan is produced from cultivars – tea plants selected by humans for some favorable qualities (harvest amount, flavor, resistance to natural dangers, etc.). When the tea plants are propagated from cuttings they carry forward 100% of information from their mother plant (essentially becoming a clone of their mother plant); and so keep the selected favorable qualities. When a tea plant is propagated from a seed, on the other hand, it only carries 50% of information from their mother plant (remaining 50% come from the pollen from another tea plant). Which means there is a high chance of the new tea plant propagated from a seed to lose the favorable qualities. That is why in Japan these days the tea plants are mostly propagated from cuttings.

Maintenance

Once the tea plants are planted in a new tea field, they need to be maintained through their life span. Some of the maintenance works will assist in the tea plant growth, some will keep it easily manageable.

One of the most important activities in tea plant management is trimming. Tea plants are trimmed routinely throughout the year to keep them at an easy to access height and to give space for new shoots to come out (more about in the section on yearly tea farming activities). Every three years or so, tea plants will experience a deeper trimming, where they are cut back to about to just about 30cm above the ground. What this does is it helps to reinvigorate a tea plant – it grows younger branches with more energy, that will result in a higher yield. The deeper trimming is usually performed after the spring harvest (that produces the most prized teas) and the tea plant is left to rest and regrow until the next spring.

Replanting

After some time even deep trimmings will stop being effective and the tea plants will stop giving economically viable harvest. That is when the tea plants may be dug out and new cuttings will take their place. It has to be mentioned, though, that it will take about five years for a newly planted tea field to give a good harvest. Every year it will be trimmed and looked after until the new tea plants develop strong root and branch networks. Then tea production will begin again.

Yearly Tea Farming Activities
Every year there are many farming activities to make sure tea plants stay healthy and give a good yield. The one we usually care about the most is harvesting, – or collecting tea leaves for tea production. In addition to that, tea plants are also trimmed, fertilized to give some extra nutrition, shaded and so on.

Harvesting – Seasons

When we think about tea cultivation, harvesting is the most intensive tea farming activity. In Japan tea harvesting goes on from spring to autumn and depending on the area there are usually 3-4 harvesting seasons (as it takes about 1.5 months for the new shoots to grow).

Spring season (一番茶) is the most important in Japanese tea production, as that is when the most prized and highest in grade teas, such as Matcha, Gyokuro and Sencha are produced. Depending on the area it usually starts in the middle of April or beginning of May and goes until the end of May or beginning of June.

Summer season(二番茶) is next and it usually takes place from the beginning/middle of June to the middle/end of July. Teas produced in this season are lower in grade.

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