tea notes

These notes are maintained by Ben Discoe.

How to grow tea in Hawai‘i?

General Resources

• There are endless resources on buying tea, brewing tea, drinking tea, selling tea, and so forth - but very few on growing tea.
• TeaUSA.org is the site for:
  • The Tea Association of the USA, Inc., The Tea Council of the USA, and the Specialty Tea Institute (STI)
  • to do: learn more about these
• The (English) Wikipedia articles on Tea (the beverage) and Camellia sinensis (the plant)
• If you can read Traditional Chinese characters (or just want to look at interesting maps and pictures) then the Professional Consultancy for Chinese Healthy Kung-Fu Tea has an amazing wealth of information.
  • Some areas are partly bilingual; we've tried  Google Translate for sometimes hilarious but often fairly close results.
• Most online resources such as startateabusiness.com ($500 for access to some educational materials, hard sell) assume you will be retailing or catering tea.
• For really big tea operations, there are international consultants such as Teacraft which can help with sourcing, growing, processing, packaging, marketing etc. but we here on the island of Hawai'i are still a bit small for that.

Hawai'i Tea Society

• The Hawai'i Tea Society (HTS) is nonprofit organization with a few dozen people.  There is no mailing list, and the forums are idle.  They do schedule meetings and occasionally arrange for interesting tea presentations.
• Their site section on Growing Tea has a few good small articles.

USDA

• Tea is the focus of a USDA Hawai'i project, which doesn't seem to have a page on the USDA website, although "Investigating the Potential of Tea, Camellia sinensis, as a High Value Niche Market Crop for Hawaii:" is mentioned on AGRICULTURAL POSTHARVEST, VALUE-ADDED PRODUCTS AND PROCESSING PROGRAM, in their 2005 Annual Report
  • That report, as well as the CTAHR website, mentions that "Over 10,000 cuttings were provided from the Mealani Research Station in June 2005 to initiate their program".  Is this actually true?  Where exactly did those 10,000 cuttings go?
• The USDA station on the Big Island doing tea research is south of Hilo on the Stainback Highway.  It is component of PBARC (Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center).  Dr. Francis Zee is the Research Leader.
• USDA Tea pictures shows a rooted cutting, flower, plants and hedges in Hawai'i.
• They distribute cuttings a few times a year, see below under 'Tea Plants: Cuttings'

CTAHR

• The University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) has a tea research program.
• The program includes three tea experimental planting areas, in Volcano, Hilo, and Mealani.
• Strangely, although it's a fairly large program involving tens of thousands of plants, the CTAHR website seem to have little mention the program, or tea cultivation.
• CTAHR does have lots of great general material about Sustainable Agricultural in Hawai‘i, although it does not apply (much) to tea.
• Dwight Sato is the CTAHR person to contact about tea.  That's him in the tea field at Volcano to the right.
• CTAHR helped launch the annual 'Taste of the Hawaiian Range' event back in 1996; since at least 2003 it has served tea samples and tea information at the event.
• CTAHR publications on tea:
  • PD-34 Oct. 2006: Zinc Deficiency in Tea (pdf)
  • SCM-23 March 2008: In-Ground Procedure for Rooting Tea Cuttings (must be ordered for $2)
  • IP-28 March 2008: Guide to insect and mite pests of tea (Camellia sinensis) in Hawaii (must be ordered for $3)

Tea Books, Magazines and Press Coverage

Tea Varieties

Tea Plants: Availability of Cuttings, Propagating Cuttings

Tea Plants: Seeds

• I tried looking online for a source of tea seeds. I am assuming that importing cuttings could be complex because we are in Hawai'i, but seeds should be OK. However, looking online didn't turn up much. The only company i found selling seeds online is SeedRack which:
  1. Was out of stock on tea when i visited.
  2. Lists it as just "Camellia sinensis" with no cultivar/variety name at all.
• There was an effort by a few island tea growers to do a bulk order of assamica seeds. Specifically there appears to have been a order from Assam, and a later order from Darjeeling.
• 2006-2007: Eliah, Mel and others worked with and distributing seeds/seedlings from Darjeeling.  Eliah describes them thus:
  • "These seeds come from plants grown from the same area where the best Darjeeling has made its name. As for the origin, I cannot answer that. I am not so set on origin of plant material. The proof is in the tasting. Unless one does the DNA sampling, we are left to believe in its origin, as stated by the seller. Just the same as we are faced with the USDA issued tea.
    Genetic scrambling is good according to my resident geneticist. Just yesterday I was fertilizing one of my fields and I was talking about the variety in appearance in the USDA issued Yabukita. Incidentally, my Yabukita is not doing as well as the Benikaori and Darjeeling.
    Since our stand of tea will be small, as we are small scale tea farmers, there will be a blend of tea within our own farm. Again, this affirms my believe that the exclusivity of monoculture and the status of one origin over another will matter not once we taste what we have grown. Furthermore, keeping small isolated gene pools is risky from a sustainability perspective."
  • "The seeds were ordered from Himalayan Orchids, India. I met this fellow 3 1/2 years ago. By chance I found Himalayan Orchids on a tea search on the internet."
• March 2007: I got two flats of Darjeeling seedlings from Mel, 100 seeds in each tray.  Of those 200 seeds, around 100 were healthy young plants, 50 were germinated but getting a slow start, and 50 were duds.  That seems like a pretty good success rate.

Mealani Agricultural Research Station

• Mealani is one of the three CTAHR sites doing tea propagation and research.  It is located near Waimea at around 875m elevation with high rainfall.  Their tea is grown in a flat field of straight rows, with the soil covered by permeable ground cloth, and both irrigation and fertilizer delivered by tubing ('fertigation').  Photos by Deb from September 2006:
  
• They are doing many experiments with cultivation, propagation, etc.
  Here are some in-ground rooted cuttings, and perennial peanut ground-cover:
  
• Mealani got their 4 original cultivars (presumably 'bohea', 'yutaka midoi', 'benikaori' and 'yabukita') from the Lyon Arboretum on Oahu. It is acknowledged that the lineage of some of these cultivars may not be exact.
• Some pictures by Deb of the cultivars:

  Bohea

  Benikaori

  Chin Shin Oolong

• The head of the Ag Station, Milton Yamasaki, says they are not so concerned with specific cultivars.  They have planted a large area with hundreds with individual seeds, the genetics are randomized, and the plan is to go through the slow process of testing each promising plant, producing rows of cuttings from them, and developing new Hawaii-specific cultivar(s) with unique attributes.
• Reportedly, they've made good tea out of almost all the plants at Mealani, even one batch made out of the randomized field of plants! Milton says other indicators and advice from tea experts has not held up, e.g. the plants with reddish tint to their leaves should have made an inferior tea, but in fact made a superior tea to the light greenish bushes. In other words, it's all wide open and full of new possibilities.
• "Bohea" is a particularly ambiguous cultivar designation.  There is no tea industry description of it; nobody has ever heard of it.  (Maybe we could hunt down someone at Lyon who would know more.)  Both Mealani and some HTS members have found "Bohea" to grow more healthy and vigorous than other cultivars. But, Milton says that the tea they made from "Bohea" was not so great, until they blended it with some other tea from down near Volcano, and the resulting blend was very good.

Big Island Tea Growers

Other Islands: Maui

• Liam Ball's online journal The Hāmākualoa Tea Garden has descriptions and pictures of beginning tea in November 208, with 100 baby plants.

Other Islands: Kauai

• The Kealia area on Kaua'i has a large tea operation planned (see above under 'Press Coverage')
• kealanani.com is their website.  It has a few paragraph about their planned tea.  A 'Kauai Tea Company' will be formed which then works with each of the residents that will grow the tea.
• Not many other details are public yet.  According to a consultant working with them, they are bringing in live plant material from Africa and plan to begin planting 2007.  The local partner (Andy Friend, Kealanani project manager) is also a member of the HTS.  Encouragingly, they see it as the more tea growers in Hawaii the better for the industry, so there should be plenty of opportunity to be open and help each other.
• December 2007, New York Times article says: "Final approval from County came in Sept., 47 lots went on sale, 15 are now under contract."  It includes a picture labeled 'Workers tend to green tea crops as Kealanani".  Apparently they are scraping away the surface, and using white plastic and irrigation tubes, in very widely spaced rows:
  
• June 2008: We visited Kaua'i, drove around the Kealia area, took pictures, and blogged it (Tea on Kaua’i at Kealanani).  There was no tea visible except for the test field, which looks exactly like it does in the New York Times photo from last year.

Selling Processed Tea

• As of 2007, it seems so far that Big Island growers have been selling their (small to date) output directly, although there are reports that the Bibbitea Bobbitea Brew tea store on Oahu has carried some Big Island tea.  TeaRoomsHawaii contains a list of tea stores in the state.
• As of 2008, there is one tea store on the island, Kohala Winds of Change, which sometimes has local tea in stock.

Tea Tourism

• Hawai'i Community College, Hawai`i Island Educational Explorations -- Volcano
  • "We offer you and your family an educational exploration of our volcano area. [...] You will also be ushered into a dreamlike world where a tea garden exists and share in the pleasures of a Chinese Tea Ceremony. [...]. The fare for the national park tour, visit to a tea garden with tea ceremony, chef cooking demonstration, and lunch is $96.00 per person. Thursdays 8:15 a.m.—3:30 p.m. or by appointment."
  • Is this the TeaHawaii.com folks?

Planting

• Reportedly, tea doesn't mind being on a hill, so there is no need to terrace steep land.  The main reason to smooth the land is to make it physically easier for people to do the cultivating, weeding/mowing, etc.
• A reference from India says:
  • Based on style of planting:

    Up and down:	1.2 x 1.2 m	6800 plants/ha	2750 plants/acre
    Contour planting, single hedge:	1.2 x 0.75 m	10,800 plants/ha	4370 plants/acre
    Contour planting, double hedge:	1.35 x 0.75 x 0.75 m	13200 plants/ha	5340 plants/acre

  • The double hedge planting will accommodate more number of plants per unit area. Early high yield, better soil conservation, less weed growth, efficient cultural practices and better supervision are other advantages of double hedge planting.
  • Pits of size 30 x 45 cm. Keep the top and bottom soil separately. In clayey soil and drought-prone areas, deeper pits (60 cm) or trench planting will be advantageous. Planting hole of 45 cm wide and 75 cm depth are better for establishment of young plants.
• Those numbers seem a bit high.  A more typical range to expect is around 2000-3000 plants/acre.

Irrigation

• In wetter areas, established tea can grow just fine with rainfall, so irrigation is only needed for:
  1. keeping plants healthy and productive through droughts, dry spells
  2. very small plants, still getting established, without a root base
  3. delivery of fertilizer in the irrigation, for those (like Mealani) who want to use 'fertigation'
• The major irrigation company Netafim actually has a small page about Tea plantation irrigation & Nutrigation

Harvesting and Processing

• There are basically two ways to harvest tea: by hand, or by machine.  Since the finest teas are hand-picked and Hawaii pretty much has to produce fine tea to find its niche, it's assumed that most people here will take that route.  However, that's surely going to require a lot of labor.  Are each of the small growers currently hand-picking?  Are they hand-picking at the CTAHR fields at Mealani and Volcano?
• There is an experimental processing facility in Mealani as of Fall 2005, with some rolling and drying machines.
• Some videos on O-cha.com "for those interested in the finer details of Japanese green tea", shows harvesting and machine processing mostly, with some brief footage of hand processing.

Soil and Fertilizer

Pests and Diseases