How to Grow Golden Bud Tea? A Detailed Guide to Cultivation Techniques

Golden Bud is a light-sensitive, yellow-series mutant new variety of green tea. Because of its scarcity, the difficulty of cultivation, and the high cost of management and care, it is hailed by the industry as the “giant panda of tea”. How do you grow such a precious tea? Today we will introduce the cultivation techniques for Golden Bud tea.

1. Soil

Choose acidic yellow soil at low altitude, where the yellow soil has a pH of 4.6 and a calcium content of 0.06%. The components it contains can effectively promote the growth and development of Golden Bud tea.

2. Seedling Selection

Select seedlings with a height greater than 22cm, a stem diameter greater than 2.5cm, and 1 primary branch as planting stock. Such seedlings are sturdy and robust, and their later survival rate is also high.

3. Planting the Tea Seedlings

Plant the tea seedlings with a row spacing of 1m and a plant spacing of 0.25m, planting two plants per hole. After planting, water and weed promptly, and till the soil appropriately.

4. Cultivation and Loosening the Soil

The soil around the tea seedlings needs to be loosened twice: the first time after the spring tea harvest ends, and the second time during the summer and autumn tea period, with a loosening depth of 10cm. This helps the tea seedlings absorb nutrients.

5. Applying Base Fertilizer

Apply 3000kg of livestock and poultry manure, 175kg of cake fertilizer, and 22.5kg of potassium sulfate compound fertilizer per mu; the livestock and poultry manure consists of 45 parts fermented chicken manure + 25 parts fermented soybean meal + 10 parts fermented rapeseed meal + 15 parts nitrogen fertilizer + 4 parts phosphate rock powder + 0.5 parts selenium + 0.5 parts zinc.

6. Tea Picking

The tea growth period is 3-5 years, and in the fifth year it can be picked by the tip-picking method. The picked tea must be stored properly to prevent mold and rot.

It is understood that, according to measurements, the amino acid content of Golden Bud is as high as 9%, while the amino acid content of white tea is 5-7%, and the amino acid content of ordinary tea is 3-4%; Golden Bud has stable traits and its leaves are golden yellow, whereas white tea's leaves turn from white to green when the temperature reaches 25°C, and its traits are unstable.