Tea picking requires a large amount of labor and is highly seasonal. With urbanization, there has been a significant loss of young and able rural labor, increasing the demand for mechanized tea picking. However, we have gradually discovered that mechanically harvested tea gardens often quickly develop chicken claw branches and experience a rapid decline in the quality of fresh tea leaves.
In late April 2023, I conducted a pruning and revitalization experiment in my family's tea garden in Enshi, Hubei, primarily attempting to replicate the tea garden management practices of the West Lake Longjing region in Hangzhou. This involves heavy pruning of the tea plants in late April to early May, followed by fertilization, and another heavy pruning in mid-to-late July to promote the growth of more productive branches, with a light pruning in November. The goal is to maximize the benefits of spring tea production. Figure 1 shows the result of my pruning at the time, preserving the main branches.
Figure 1
However, out of laziness, I wanted to see what the effect would be without fertilizing or pruning again in mid-to-late July, so I only performed the initial pruning. During my visit home for the holidays this year, I specifically went to check on the results. From the same perspective as Figure 1, the appearance in February 2024 is shown in Figure 2. It can be seen that new shoots have emerged from the pruned branches, and they are mostly brownish-red in color, indicating good productivity.
Figure 2
To compare the effects, we can look at two adjacent rows in the same field: one row pruned in late April 2023 (Figure 3) and another left unpruned (Figure 4). It is clear that the pruned tea plants have thicker, brownish-red branches with full buds that show signs of budding. In contrast, the unpruned plants have many branches but are thinner and mostly brownish-gray in color, with no budding yet. This suggests that pruning in late April allows the tea plants to bud earlier and significantly improves the quality of fresh tea leaves; as for yield, it is inconclusive and will need to be determined during the spring harvest.
Figure 3
Figure 4
From this experiment, I believe that pruning at the end of April has excellent effects on revitalizing tea plants in Hubei. However, due to the lack of timely fertilization, there were fewer productive branches, affecting the performance of spring tea. This year, I will attempt the process again, ensuring timely fertilization and soil turnover after pruning, and we will see how it goes.