Key Points for Winter Management of Tea Cultivation

To make productive tea gardens sprout early and abundantly the following year, with strong and uniform buds, high yield, excellent quality and free from pollution, and to sell at a good price when the market opens early, strengthening winter management is key. As winter arrives, tea plants gradually stop growing and enter dormancy. At this time, tea gardens should carry out three management tasks: tea bush pruning, applying sufficient base fertilizer, and pest and disease control, so that increased income the following year is guaranteed. Zhentian Pavilion Tea Factory suggests everyone do the following work:  

1. Tea bush pruning: Pruning can be done from October of the previous year to February of the following year. The method is to cut off the uneven branches and leaves at the top of the tea bush, so that the canopy surface is flat and forms a horizontal or arc shape. Generally, the length of pruned shoots is 5-15 cm; for some chicken-claw branches, diseased and pest-damaged branches, and thin weak branches, deep pruning should be carried out; for tea gardens with many chicken-claw branches, aging tea bushes, thin, weak and uneven tea buds, low yield and poor benefits, heavy pruning and collar pruning should be carried out to cut away old tree branches, leaving stumps about 20 cm high. This is conducive to regeneration and sprouting and robust new shoots; for tea gardens with inferior varieties and low yield and poor benefits, old trees should be dug out and improved tea seedlings with excellent quality and higher yield, such as Fuxuan No. 9, Baihao 131, and Zaobaijian, should be purchased and planted.

2. Apply sufficient base fertilizer: To ensure the excellent quality of tea buds, farm organic fertilizer complete in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium should be selected. Prepare 200 kg of livestock and poultry manure per mu, add 50 kg of oil cake and 50 kg of calcium-magnesium phosphate fertilizer, mix well, ferment, and then use. Before fertilizing, first carry out a pass of intermediate tillage in the tea garden, with a digging depth of 10-20 cm, preferably without damaging the tea roots, then open trenches along the drip line at the edge of the tea canopy for deep application, and cover with soil immediately.

3. Pest and disease control: For diseased trees affected by tea blister blight, tea sooty mold, banded sclerotial blight and other diseases, dig them out by the roots and burn them promptly; check the old leaves and branches of the tea bushes, and promptly remove branches and leaves with insect eggs, insect bags or insect cocoons, and burn them in a centralized manner. After clearing the garden, spray once with lime sulfur mixture.

Tea gardens are prohibited from using highly toxic and high-residue pesticides. Biological pesticides permitted by the state for use on tea must be applied scientifically, and the safety interval must be strictly observed to ensure that the tea produced is free from pollution, so as to meet the needs of domestic and foreign tea markets and obtain higher economic benefits.