Monday, May 21, 2012

Tea picking


There are some places where you can experience tea picking for recreation. 
I had chance to try it on the trip to Shizuoka on Apr. 30.

Traditional clothes for tea-picking (The lady in the center)


You pick one bud and two leaves from the tip, which is one of the ways of picking.
Fresh foliages are still soft, so you can easily pick them by lightly pinching and pulling.  I believe that you can also tell  from the photo that the leaves are delicate.



We picked a bag of tea in 20 min.  When you smell the inside of the bag, it has a fresh green aroma which goes through up your nose.  It is quite different from the dry leaves.  I guess that the aroma comes from the odor of leaf alcohol (one of the substances of tea).  

You can take them home.  I wanted to make homemade tea, but I was so tired when I got home. So, I just sautéed them for a dish but I was a bad cook. Hahaha (^^;; 

6 comments:

  1. Nice,
    I grow camellia sinensis at home.
    I've ordered seeds.
    They have been growing well but after repotting they started to die. Some of them are trying to recover. I don't know what has happened cause I was careful. I'll see. Maybe I'll reorder seeds.
    But I'm wondering how are the tea bushes grown.
    I mean distance between them, so they act as continuous line. My teas are just one stem and leaves I would like to grow it with spread "crown" like on the pictures.
    Problem is, that my teas don't grow so fast so experimenting is slow:).

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    Replies
    1. Wow, you are growing tea plants from the seeds!! The interval between tea plants at Japanese tea fields is usually 30-45cm. I have a tea plant (40cm tall) in my yard, which is also recovering from near-death. I hope that your and mine tea plants will grow like a crown!

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  2. If you are looking to lose weight or you are already on a weight loss program but you want to boost that plan, try adding a couple of cups of green tea a day and see what happens.

    ReplyDelete
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