Does the origin of the tea seed matter?
When you are looking to plant a number of tea plants, does the origin of the tea seed really matter? As it turns out, yes it does! In March of this year we planted some seeds from Taiwan. This means we now have seeds from Georgia, Nepal, India and now Taiwan on our US tea farm here in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Although they are all Camellia Sinensis each seed performs differently. Each seed is bred for different conditions with a different mother plant. Having a wide variety provides us with varying growing habits and potential flavors. It is also disease protection, to keep us from being a "monocropping" situation from direct cloning. If a disease comes in and wipes out a plant,...