84 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



PRUNING. 



IT is stated elsewhere at length (page 100) why I conceive 

 pruning to be necessary for the Tea plant. Whether I am 

 right or not the fact is certain that without pruning very 

 little leaf is produced. 



Pruning must be done in the cold weather when the plant 

 is hybernating, that iis to say, when the sap is down. The 

 sooner after the sap goes down it is done the better, for the 

 sooner the tree will then flush in the spring. 



There have been many theories about pruning Tea bushes, 

 but none, I think, worth much practically, for the simple 

 reason that it is impossible to prune 250,000 plants (the 

 number in a lOO-acre garden, at 2,500 to the acre) 1 with the 

 care and system a gardener prunes a favourite fruit tree. 

 The operation must be a coarse one, done by ignorant men, 

 in large numbers at one time, who can in a measure be more 

 or less taught, and the nearer they do right the better : still 

 really careful and scientific pruning can never be carried out 

 on a Tea plantation. 



The time to do it, too, is very limited. It cannot be begun 

 before the trees have done flushing, say, at the earliest, 

 middle of November, or continued, if early flushes and a large 

 yield next season is looked for, beyond end of January, at 

 the latest. Thus at the most two months and a half is all 

 the time given. 



I shall confine myself therefore to giving such directions 

 as will be practically useful 



1 In a 5<x>-acre garden the number is I,' 50,000, which ought all to be pruned 

 in two months! 



