The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1895-11-12
RAISING TEA IN AMERICA.
DIR. sHEPARD's EXPERIMENTS
IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

The question or Profits MOI Settled
Efforts to Establish the o In
dustry I'm the South.
The proposition has been maintained
that tea could be produced In America,
and recent experiments seer to prove
years 1t vas not supposed that tea
could be grown successfully In India,
but since 1851 IL has been demon
trated th24y Indian tea Is not only
good, but 80 that 1t ia q strong rival
Ia The mafSsta. of the world OF Chinese
tea. The climate in the States South
of New England corresponds very
closely with that Of the Indian ten
regions, and this is especially true of
the section about Charleston, s.. c.,
whore the only persistent effort tO.
grow tea In the United States has been
made. The annual rainfall is q little
less thar In either Japan or Ceylon,
and the extremes OF heat and cold are
greater, but otherwise the conditions
are very similar.
Tea plants have been grown In q
desultory fashion for q great many
years in various parts OF the South,
and some of them may be- seer half
wild to-day in the oyergrOwn gardens
of the white planters, where a little
tea is raised In q rude and ignorant
manner. Some Southern planters i'm
ported tea plants long before the war,
and their efforts to introduce the new
crop were paralyzed by the war. This
impoverished planters neglected the
gardens a~fterward, but the tea plants
fiourished in a way, yielding crops OF
doubtful quality. One Of these early
tea gardens were planted In 1860 by a
Mr.. Smith was Fayetteville, N. c.,
aud for u time it l%ourished. A recent
visit to the place showed the neglect
Into which the tea plants have fallen,
though good tea is still made on the
place by the widow of the original
planter. For owe twenty-five years
the plants have had to struggle for ex-
istence among briers, wild shrubs and
pines, but they have held their W so
bravely that they are the most con-
spicuous growths IL the garden. The
plants are nov really young trees, and
they produce annually a crop OF tea
that has been pronounced worth fully
81 u pound by the cargo. One would
never suspect the presence OF q tea
- Is necessary to push ones way
~ brambles, bushes and young
D.. each the garden proper. This
IL a.. ration OF how tea has been
grown A.. 4 o South. :
80 When Cen. LeDuc was made com
missioner Of ag7;Dulture in 1873 he, be-
came interested In the private expert
ments OF tea culture and after studying
the question he started public ex'
perimonts with the plants In the hope
of introducing q new crop for farmers
In the South. He went out Of Office
before he could complete the expert
ments, and the tea gardens which he
caused to be planted at Summerville
S. c., were abandoned to grow up IL
wild thickets. After this individual,
again made experiments, aid in lS9:
some tea was raised, cured and sold u
a profit. The first crop amounted to
trile less than $50 pounds and judge
pronounced it of high quality.
The successful experiments wer,
carried on by DR.. Charles U. Shepard
At his place, Pinehurst, he has six TIC;
gardens, of IN acre each, which hav'
been planted with choice tea seed oh
tanned from various quarters. Ate
beginning his experiments he Dough
q part of the great Huntingdon planta
ti0n and leased the tea gardens u
Summerville, whore the governmen
d experiments were made, with tn
privilege of removing the trees an,
, plants II he desircd.N He also secures
new choice seed from abroad an
started q small nursery of tea plants
Inc BOGUS Wcre ooIdiheu iirOm Snlnu
Japan and elsewhere, and were plant
ed upon different soils and with dill
ferent exposures. Experiments wit
young plants from the NURSERY az
being conducted by him in this wa
to-day. Gardens covering full tie
more acres are in course OF prepars
tion now with seeds brought frol
Ceylon and the H%imalayas and othe
tea sections of the Orient. The te
from the old government plant
proved of excellent quality, but hi
chief hopes are based upon the plant
raised from his own selected seed
ut Raleigh has since made eXper
monts with the tea plants. AT OIL
Point Comfort and on the Delawar
and Maryland peninsula the har
winters have injured the plants t
such an extent that it does not pay t
cultivate them for the market crop
but in the piney woods country sout
OF Raleigh the climate and soil appea
to be eminently adapted to the cultur
Of tea.
The actual results and %possibilitie
OF tea culture in the South have beeI
summarized by DR.. Shepard, who say
cessfully here, either from seed O
cuttings. His crop of 1892. unde
high cultivation, proved equal to ar,
OF the Indian gardens. Owing to tn,
%cheapness of Asiatic labor employed
in picking the tea. the cheap grade
cannot be grown successfully in tn,
United States, but the higher grades
which are obtained only from tn,
young leaves, can be cultivated salts
f~actorily. The first crop Of tea picket
at Pinehurst was Of the assam hybri(
leaf, aad tbs is we'll adapted to tn,
manufacture Of black tea. The Chi
nese and Japanese plants in DR.
Shepard's gardens are about to YIELD
o crop and efforts will be mado to pro
duce from these green and oolOng tea.
similar to those imported. He say.
that the gardens are too young yet fol
him to make positive statements az II
the question of profits in growing tea
but he thinks that the substitution o
machinery for hand-work in picking
and curing the leaf will make it pos
sible to compete successfully with the
cheap labor Of the East. The Outlooh
for successful tea culture In the South
is\ now good, he thinks. The chic
drawback Is that a large expenditure
Is required to get h gardens into
paying 0rder. The cost and skill Of
Southern labor are important factors
hat will largely determine the result
of the new enterprise.
So far the experiments show that
the leaf grown in the Carolinas IL
better for black than for green tea.
The cost Of picking with Southern
labor Is about % cents per pound OF