86 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



PRUNING. 



IT is stated elsewhere at length (page 102) 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 is 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)* 

 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. 



* In a 500-acre garden the number is 1,250,000, which ought all to be 

 pruned in two months ! 



