Hey y'all this is Chuck Marsh with Useful Plants Nursery and we're gonna we're out here with my little tea collection here and we're gonna talk to you about how to harvest tea from your tea comellias. So generally what you want to do is harvest the two to three most recent leaves on a tea plant while they're still young before they mature. This will give you the finest quality tea and the way I generally do that is I come in on the backside of the leaf above which I'm gonna be harvesting and I just take and break it right off just like that. So this is one two three and then a little terminal leaf right there so this is about what you want to harvest the number can vary a little bit usually two leaves is okay if the plant's not as mature or if the leaves are starting to harden off but about three is it just about right. So let's go over that again. You start place your fingers on the opposite side of just above the last leaf that you're gonna leave on the plant and then you just break it right off and give a little pull. Sometimes it'll break absolutely clean sometimes you need to work it. Sometimes it'll actually if the stem is a little bit more mature I'll actually put my fingernail right in there below it to make sure that it comes off just fine. So let's try that one more time. One two three leaves just below it this time I'm gonna use my fingernail see where my fingernail is. The reason I do this is so that we don't end up with a bunch of long dead stems there and it breaks really easily. It pushed down with my thumb pull up with my fingernail up against it and you get a nice clean break there that'll heal nicely and then these buds will break multiple times and you'll have three two or three stems where before you only had one. Quite simple. Then the next stages will be to either dry it or steam it to make tea and we'll show you that in another video. Alright thank y'all have fun I just love harvesting my own tea.