Pinehurst Tea Garden

05/31/2026

I used to work with this guy and his favorite saying when we got down to doing some job was "There is nothing to it but to do it."
Growing tea is like any other endeavor.
There was also this other guy we called 'Blister' because he always showed up after all the heavy lifting was done.

Is it time for tea? 🌱 🫖 ☕️

The University of California's Kearney Research and Extension Center thinks high-value tea crops might be just the ticket for small-acreage growers facing limited water supplies. Scientists there are working with 4,000 tea plants to determine optimal soil conditions, irrigation practices, disease and pest management strategies, and ways to reduce the labor demands of tea production.

Learn more about how tea is doing in California from our ATTRA news story at https://buff.ly/c9n65bE and hear about growing tea in a different climate from our Voices from the Field podcast "Episode 359: Teatime in Mississippi" at https://buff.ly/3lgKjAD

05/28/2026

An acquaintance of mine that really knows a lot about tea once said that tea should always be rinsed because a person can never know who handled it.

05/25/2026

Price wise, how could a US market ever compete with this magnitude of production?
Our Food and Drug Administration has rules that frown upon even air drying of tea. Years ago there was a huge push for what was called GAP or Good Agricultural Practices which guidelines were really strict, and determined even if one could sell something. What it did was drive up the cost of producing something. It came out of California if that tells you anything. It absolutely banned any animals among crops, even birds flying over. I remember at a conference about this they had a photo of a dog doing what comes naturally out among some crop, and this would have your crop banned from sale. At the time I thought we had reached peak insanity here in the USA, but boy was I surprised.
I am all for being as sanitary as possible, but sometimes common sense just seems to fly out the window, laws are created because that is what government does.
Anyway China can export tea that a person can buy 100 grams off amazon for under $10 while using a bucket tractor to move it around. It takes me about three hours just to pick enough tea to process out to 100 grams. That is just a little over three ounces.

05/21/2026

Sort of monkeyed around with the photo of looking out my window early morning of the Sun coming up over some of the tea. It was nice and gave a sense of the surreal.
The second photo is more of the reality of a work in progress. Too much going on at one time.

04/28/2026

A beautiful, cool morning and yesterday picked (or plucked, never know which word to use) about two pounds of really nice tea buds, some with one and some with two leaves. The humidity was just right and they snapped right off. This grower down in Florida, Mike Loeb, wrote a paper about humidity which made me think of it. Humidity is an important part of tea, processing and storage included. I never thought about it but to***co curing was the same way.
Laid it out to wilt about sixty hours and guess it will be about four ounces of drinking tea once Sun-dried. I actually had saved some White Tea from the first picking of last year so I drank that while picking this batch. It took me about two hours to get this amount. It is slow work but well worth it I guess. The tea from last year was the longest I had stored and aged any tea, and it was very good. That part is very complex and much to be learned about with controlling the temperature and humidity, along with proper storage. It is like wine I suppose.
Anyway this year looks as if there will be plenty to pick. The plants are growing well and looking good, all pruned as desired and organically fertilized, the birds are singing, and the snakes are all lying around waiting for it to rain.
Hopefully will be able to have enough White Tea to press into small cakes to store and age. That has always been the goal.

04/27/2026

This is a little part of the tea gardens that sits on a real sandy piece of ground. The plants sort of were cold hurt this Winter maybe due to the lack of moisture. I've actually found a few Native American bits of pottery in this area and they normally lived on well drained soils. This place is located down in a flood plain with two creeks about a mile apart. Anyway, I've been trying to grow more cover crops in this area to help improve the organic matter, in this case kale, vetch, and some rye grass. I also severely pruned the plants.
With the bit of rain yesterday and today everything was really clean and green.

04/25/2026

This is interesting for those trying to work around conventional fertilizer. There is much talk about regenerative farming which normally incorporates animals such as cattle into the rotation. This deals with just bio-mass into the improving soils through cover crops. Now North Carolina offers testing to see what amounts of nutrients are actually are provided, which is important. The actual page to give one an idea is here: https://www.ncagr.gov/divisions/agronomic-services/waste-analysis/agronomic-services-determining-nutrient-value-cover-crops

In case you missed it, our Agronomic Services Division recently released a new guide to help growers maximize nutrient value of their cover crops!

The guide provides instructions on how to collect cover crop biomass samples, submit them for analysis, and calculate nutrient value on a per acre basis. The resource was created to give growers clear, practical steps they can apply immediately in the field. Learn more below!

More info: https://www.ncagr.gov/news/press-releases/2026/04/02/ncdacs-agronomic-services-division-releases-new-guide-help-growers-maximize-nutrient-value-cover

04/19/2026

This recent video was made by a tea processer out of China named William Osmot along with his wife Yubai. They own the tea company Farmerleaf and have made quite a few interesting and informative videos over the years. This particular one is the fairly recent transformation of methods of growing tea in his area of China and the marketing behind it. This goes on in every facet of agriculture as time goes on but with the fledgling tea growing in the USA it provides the chance to not make the same mistakes.
One of the big “things” I often hear concerns the terroir of the land not being the same as China so therefore tea will not taste as good. How would anybody know unless it is grown? Does a tomato grown in North Carolina taste different than one grown in Yunnan Providence China? One grown in my yard might taste different from the one grown right next door.

All goes back to the terroir of the land affecting the taste of the tea. Different definitions are given for what makes the terroir of an area. This is a simple one on a three legged stool approach.
Soil: Nutrient levels, drainage, and mineral composition. This also includes the Microclimate/Flora/Fauna: Surrounding trees, plants and groundcovers, and microbes in the soil. Different areas will have different Native plants, but of course here in the USA Camellia sinensis is not native.
Climate: Temperature, rainfall, and sunshine. I include topography here. Tea in the USA will never have the elevations factor, but then neither does India.
People: Not only the growers and those that process the tea leaves but also the many different methods and factors in doing those parts. Culture is a major part of that also.
Take the time and enjoy the video, it is really thought provoking, and just plain interesting. My place is starting to look like it so I got a thrill out of it. It looks about as dry as my place, no smoking allowed.

In Southern Yunnan, tea was traditionally cultivated in the forests, barely managed, and with low yield per hectare.In the late 1980s, agricultural modernisa...

04/13/2026

Weather conditions have been interesting to say the least. Here in the Sandhills of North Carolina it has become very hot for the season, and very dry. In fact drought conditions with really no rain in sight.
The work goes on and at the moment have been making compost tea and fertilizing all the tea plants, which is quite an undertaking. The goal is to see if all of this garden can be run without outside materials but cover crop seeds. I guess the mode is the permaculture model though I am still working around with the “feral tea” model. I really don’t have the time available to see that part through but maybe somebody else will see it finished.
Organic growing is possible and all these plants have been grown with that method. The whole principle is to get a natural balance for the soil to do its thing. I began with Fish Emulsion but have gone to making just compost tea. The photo below shows the cover crop around some tetraploid seedlings that were fertilized with the tea last early fall and one can see the difference in height and color of the cover crops.
In the second photo is a small vegetable garden with some tea plants in the background that were grown from organically seed from some of the first plants I had acquired. So these are the first plants grown completely from seed produced organically. The seed from these plants will be totally organic this year. It took eight years to get to this point. Did not prune them and the growth is really coming out.
By the way I am not certified organically and not even supposed to use the word to describe anything.