Field Works on an Estate
The work that is involved on an estate to ensure that healthy leaves continue to flourish and are skilfully prepared for your comforting cuppa!
The Bush
In its normal state of growth tea can grow into a tree of some 35 feet in height. For easy control and constant harvesting, planters have developed a pruning and plucking system which controls the bush at about two and a half feet in height, encouraging it to spread and fill across to the surrounding bushes. We call it the 'plucking table'.
Tea Bush that has just been pruned and is beginning to recover with new shoots
The picture above is of a bush that has just been pruned and is beginning to recover with new shoots and in about 90 days the bush will be able to be plucked in as a new field with the skilled new field pluckers.
Pruning
Each field is maintained on a cycle dependent on elevation.
- Low elevation: pruned every 2.5 to 3 years
- Mid elevation: 3 - 4 years
- High elevation: 4 - 5 years
An estate will usually range from 1 - 6 Divisions and range from 50 (20.23 hectares) to 4,000 (1,618.76 hectares) acres in extent. The larger estates & groups are often made up of several original proprietary coffee estates. Thus 6 divisions may well be 6 old estates from the 1800's.
Each year about 2 fields in each division will need pruning and brought back bursting with energy, to go back into plucking. Recovery of the shoots back to tipping is about 90 to 105 days for new shoots to reach the level of the plucking table. Once the long green shoots are up tipping takes place.
2. Drains
Tea Estates create their own service roads and bridges
The picture above illustrates that estates create their own service roads and bridges to enable the estate vehicles to access the tea fields where the plucked leaf is ready to be taken with speed back to the factory to avoid deterioration and oxidising before rolling.
In order to control soil erosion from heavy rains before the tea field is planted out with vegetative propagated tea clones (VP) the field which is steeply sloping has 2 foot deep box drains cut across the hillside to the contour line. This slows the flow of water and allows any soil to settle in the box.
3. Weeding
This is a monthly exercise which is carried out fairly gently without scraping the soil to any extent. Grasses and certain binding weeds are encouraged to combat soil erosion these days whereas in earlier years weeds were eliminated.
Traditionally every family received an area to work in their spare time for increased income. Usually the family would then leave grandmothers and grandfathers to do this, together with younger children who enjoy being in the fields.
4. Manuring
In my grandfather's days he often used horse and cattle manure, with compost and Poonac (the by products from the coconut mills) for manuring. Later the Colombo Commercial Co and Baurs introduced the modern scientifically formulated artificial manures.
This is based on the application of 10 lbs (4.54 kilos) of Nitrogen for every 100 lbs (45.36 kilos) of made tea yielded. This and increasing areas of the new high yielding Vegetative Propagated (VP) bushes, resulted in rising yields.
5. Disease Control
In the 1960's spraying of chemicals was the standard response to disease. It was realized that Dieldrin created as many problems as it solved, by killing the Braconid Wasp (Macrocentrus hormonae) which parasitized the Tortrix moth.
The TRI concentrated on biological control, encouraging the right species of insect for nature to do the controlling. This has been a huge success story in the island and the International ISO organization recently congratulated the industry on its performance and the production of the cleanest teas in the world.
6. Nurseries
These are vital to sustain large supplies of stock for speedy planting in the short planting season, as the monsoons break.
Tea Nursery with VP clonal nodal cuttings
The picture above is of the beds of VP clonal nodal cuttings with 1,000 cuttings to each bed. The plants will be planted out in the field after one year. The plants will be plucked at about 2 years.
Bush Life Expectancy
- Seed sown tea: 75 - 80 years life
- V.P. planted tea (Low country): Ideally 35 years
- V.P. planted tea (High grown): 50 - 60 years
7. Replanting
At the present wages, replanting costs have gone above Rs 2.5 million. The basic premise is every estate should re-plant 2% per annum of the total estate acreage in order to keep to an ongoing cycle of renewal.
| Replanting Phase | Total cost per Ha Rs / Ha | |
|---|---|---|
| Uprooting Year | 925,044 | |
| Rehabilitation | 79,730 | |
| Planting Year | 1,171,542 | |
| 1st Year upkeep | 257,625 | |
| 2nd Year upkeep | 321,289 | |
| Total | 2,755,230 | |
| Labour Cost | @ | 687.00 |
At this present time in 2016 there are approximately Rs.186 to the £1 sterling and this equates to an approximate replanting cost of £14,813 per hectare. Without replanting on a regular basis yields fall and overheads rise which equals bankruptcy.
8. Plucking
The ideal part of the new flush for top quality tea but these days hard to achieve in the interests of modern labour relations
One of the most important operations to the tea-maker. From pruning the bush takes about 100 days to recover growth to the plucking table. Each division has a new field plucking force, of usually 60 highly skilled pluckers (mainly women).
Robert Wilson observing new field pluckers using their sticks to maintain the 'Mattam' (Tamil for contour plucking)
The field comes into the divisional plucking cycle with every bush being plucked every 7 - 10 days depending on the weather. 7 days in wet weather, 10 days in arid dry periods, every day of the year.
The new 'flush' appearing above the darker mature leaves and broken stems where the plucker broke back to in maintaining the contour level
Tea Quality Classifications
Single Estate Seasonal
They have to come from a single estate from that core S/W or Uva season period - or just in the window either side which would be the next quality down as long as there is little rain on the estate.Single Estate Standard
These are still single estate but they are teas produced from the daily programme come rain or sunshine, blended up to a tea board standard laid down for each district.Quality Blend Requirements
To bring such teas up to marketable standards will require 8% to perhaps 20% of the classic seasonal quality leaf to be added to teas plucked in the monsoonal wet seasons.Yield Evolution Over Time
Early estates including our own in the 1900's were yielding 400 lbs of made tea per acre. Remember from 100 lbs of green leaf in the field, we get approximately 20 to 22 lbs of made tea.
(with new clonal material)