October r, 1888.] TMF. TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
283 
LEAF PLUCKING, TEA, &c. 
As far as this season has gone, it is just about as bad 
as last season was a good one. A number of gardens 
are far behind in their estimates, and with but little 
chance now of making good the lost ground, no matter 
how favourable the remaining portion ol our season 
may be. The short outturn without a rice in prices 
will just make .ill the dill'orenco between concerns pay- 
ing a dividend or proelauiing a lo-s; this to the sorely 
tried shareholders of tea estates after being buoyed up 
by last season, will be, to say the least of it, very vex- 
atious, and we will doubtless hear of wholesale 
chanyei in managements this coming cold season. 
This se ison we have had hail-storms with an excessive 
rainfall, and this has much to say to our short yield to 
date. 
Beddes, having suffered from hail-storms and an ex- 
cessive rain I a 1 we have suffered from red spider 
blight very severely, and this blight in itself is quite 
sufficient to ruiu a season^ prospects if it sets in badly. 
Those gardens that were not cut up with hail were 
unable to get away owing to the excessive rain and 
cold weather we experienced up till Juue ; lowlying 
estates imperfectly drained, suffered through the soil 
being submerged ; aud all more or less from red spider. 
The ee ison has so far been one of the very worst the 
tea industry has had to contend with for a long time, 
and more especially will it be felt when we were lojk- 
ing so i xpectantly forward for another bumper season, 
so that we might, on the t >p of last year, swamp the 
China teas out of the London market, ami at the same 
time make it hot for our friends in Ceylon. * Had 
we been able to do this, there is not a shadow of a 
doubt that with the ascen .aucy we had once got of the 
Loudon market, we would have been in a position to 
have held our own against all comers, but I fear, 
owing to a short crop, we will lose some ground, which 
at such a critical time as this is very disappointing. 
It will take another year or two before we hold the 
position which a bumper crop wou'd have given us 
this year in the London market. We hi.ve been told 
that fine teas are what buyers are wanting this year, 
ainl so a rush has been mule to satisfy the demand, 
with the result that our fine teas have exceeded the 
demand and are only now fetching the price of medium 
quality teas. Iu a former communication I said that 
only 26 per cent, of our teas should be of this very 
linn class, ami explained my reasons for saying so. 
HOW many men have sacrificed medium quality tea 
tor this fine tea" this season, who if they had to do it 
again, would go iu for it? 
After bushes have been pruned, for the first flush 
leave four, the s coud two, and thirl one, leaves res- 
pectively, and towards the end of the season only the 
quarter leaflet which the coolies term the jennum. If 
any of my readers will look up " Johnson's Gardener 
Dictionary, " or any other standard book on p'ant 
culture, they will find in what position leaves stand 
to the plant. Here is what " Johnson " says : — " Leaves 
are highly vascular ogam in which are performed 
some of thu most imporiant functions of a plant. They 
ah! very general, but not absolutely uecesaary orcans, 
since branches sometimes perh i in their offices. Such 
plants, however, as naturally po-sess them are des- 
troyed or greatly injured by being deprived of them.'' 
Acs u. he says :— " The functions of leaves appear to be 
a combination of those of the lungs and stomachs of 
animals | they not only modify tho food brought to 
them from the roots, so as to fit it for increasing the 
size ol the parent plant, but they also absorb nourish, 
in. lit from the a'mosphere," fcc , \c. Tho power of 
leaf to generate sap is in proportion to its area of 
surface, exposure to the light and cougeniul situatiou." 
objoot in (j'.iotln? Jehnson is to show my readers 
WUt an autborit) ..iys on the subject, and so to add 
weight to my argument that nil leaves should not be 
■'ripped Ofl in pruning, | N. B — En.] and that 
tb. best means ,,| getting quantity with medium quality 
- 1 \ -in king to the rub- laid down by mo for the leaving 
' BOW kind ant brotherly ! What if Ceylon, with 
"li u n laut yiuld and th.< absence, of pest . makes it hot 
I t the big brotbur.!— Po. 
of four, two and one leaves in the first, second and 
third flushes. Owing to the visitation of red spider this 
season in most estates, one of the most injurious of 
all our pests, leaf has been checked iu its growth, as 
this little creature so impregnates the leaf and exhausts 
it of all its sap, that the leaves so affected are unable 
to perform the functions required of them, and we 
thus get little or no leaf, and what we do get is tho 
dwarfed crinkled leaf from which good tens cannot be 
made. The only way to overcome this is to cultivate 
the bushes and try to make growth, and though it is 
a trying time waiting till the bushoi make a start, it 
is really the only safe and sure remedy we have, and 
far and away superior to the reme ly gone in for by 
some men of plucking all the crinkle I leaves down to 
jennum, as by this latter treatment the plants undergo 
a very severe shock, as it deprives them of their very 
lungs, and to my mind such treatment of a bush is 
quite as bad as the blight itself, if not worse. Now, 
another point I want to draw the attention of my 
readers to, is the difference of yield that exists bet- 
ween some districts that are very similarly situated as 
to soil and climate, and the vain and fut le attempts 
made by men to get a similar yield without having 
studied how this can be got. Bushes to yield a large 
quantity of leaf per acre require first of all to be of a 
good jot, secondly to be treated so that the very most 
can be made out of them, and there is no use in think- 
ing it can be got any other way legitimately. It can, 
of course, be got for about three years by systematic- 
ally hard plucking the bushes, aud this is but too 
often done and the garden suffers for it aB do pro- 
prietors, who, from an excessive greed cry out for 
large dividends when their gardens for some cause or 
another, such as inferior jut of tea, want of cultivation, 
bad treatment extending over a series of years, or from 
exhaustion of the soil, as not in a position to yield 
well. We hear men say, we don't want big bushes, 
we want small broad plants. Their idea of what a 
small broad plant should be like, I hardly fancy they 
could describe if called upon to do so. I am quite 
sure no really good man would care to have big lanky 
plants, his object being to have a small or medium- 
sized plant, carrying breadth with it, as Le is quite 
wide enough awake to know the position the leaves 
hold to a bush, as he is aware that it is not only from 
the roots a plant derives its food. Such a man will by 
careful pruning, and plucking, bring his bushes into 
shape, so that they may cover as large an a*ea as 
possible. Plucking down to the jennum before the 
month of September, I consider hard on plants, and 
only permissible in exceptional cases, such as iu plant 
that is to be pruned down to the stump the coming 
cold season, or on large indigenous bushes; the object 
iu so plucking being to get finer leaf. No one is fool 
enough to imagine, I hope, that this style of plucking 
gives quantity. In the above cases it is allowable for 
the reasons laid down by me, but to do so on small 
hushes is nothing more than suicidal ; the large in- 
digenous bush covers a much lesser area of ground 
than the mediumsized plant, consequently has more 
leaves or lungs on it, and, as a rule, this class of 
plant is only cut over the top in the pruuing season, 
and not cleaned out much, so that iU branches, large 
and small, combined with the leaves, help to keep the 
plant healthy. Large bushes are best adapted for fine 
leaf plucking, and small bushes for quantity ; at first 
this may peon) absurd, but it is the case nevertheless, 
for in tho former the loaf is nipped off every fifth day 
when very small, and in the other the leaf is allowed 
to grow forming wood as it grows, aud plucked from 
the eighth to tenth day, and such leaf is bound to 
weigh more than fine. 
Iu conclusion, let me say that more harm has been 
don.- with fine plucking to estates, than by coarse 
plucking, and this fine plucking originated iu this 
district with exports who rame up to teach men the 
work they were paid for doing, and to make fine teas. 
Tin so men insisted on tine leaf apart from quautity 
and so gardens were sacrificed for a season or two's 
crops However, that was of no concern to such mini, 
w li.> were, an to speak, only time bargains. — Cainaui. 
—/ndian PfonlMEs' Qittrte. 
