Since tea growing in Mount Wuyi, people who come and go have never stopped studying the local customs, and these people have left many literature reports for future generations to refer to.
From the creative formation of the unique traditional Wuyi farming practices in the rock tea area to the repair and improvement of later generations step by step, to today’s special research on various influencing factors of the tea garden has emerged in endlessly… Mount Wuyi has its own unique farming system.
For various reasons, Mount Wuyi production area is no longer the peak state of decades ago, and the awareness of repairing and maintaining the mountain site is gradually spreading. Many people are increasingly aware that some traditional management methods may not be suitable anymore
At this point, it is necessary to incorporate “technology” into the management approach to seek change.
01 What can be used to keep you in the high-quality soil defense battle?
In our view, having a good mountain field is like receiving a golden rice bowl bestowed by heaven, and the rest is to hold the rice bowl well. The mountain field is well managed, and there are many people who hold this “rice bowl” well. Of course, there are also some who throw bowls – the other party refused the old man’s feeding and kicked the bowl.
For example, if the “grass” is exhausted, this situation is like having a “golden and silver mountain” but blindly managing mechanically, limited by traditional farmland thinking, mistakenly equating tea trees with those annual, short growing crops.
Tea gardens are not equivalent to farmland, and perennial economic crops such as tea trees require a sustainable output that is stable and of high quality. This requires tea trees to have a long-term stable growth environment.
Soil without surface vegetation or with very little surface vegetation coverage is prone to soil erosion. When a heavy rain falls, the high-quality soil and humus on the surface are washed away, and the resources available to tea trees are very limited.
Compared to the outdated traditional farming mindset of ‘no grass grows’, the’ shallow hoeing and grass cutting ‘method in Wuyi farming is more gentle and beneficial. While loosening the soil, it can also remove some weeds and cover the field, reducing the habitat for pests and diseases and adding organic nutrients to the soil.
The cut grass is spread among the rows
Shallow hoeing and weeding “affirms the advantageous side of weeds, not only believing that weeds can absorb some mineral elements that general cultivated crops cannot absorb and utilize, synthesize green organisms, and are an important source of soil surface organic matter, but also believing that weeds’ plants and roots can protect the surface soil.
Tea garden management with added “technology” will choose to plant some slope protection plants to maintain soil and prevent high-quality soil erosion.
National Soil and Water Conservation Science and Technology Demonstration Park
Before this, how to choose slope protection plants is also a question worth considering. Firstly, tall varieties cannot be selected, as this will affect the growth of tea trees and agricultural operations in tea gardens; Secondly, priority should be given to choosing perennial vegetation that is long-lasting and stable. If choosing an annual variety, it would require replanting every year, which would be too costly.
Finally, it is necessary to choose vegetation with strong stress resistance. Vegetation with poor stress resistance is difficult to form a dominant group in tea gardens and cannot play a significant role.
Ophiopogon japonicus, which has not yet become a dominant group, requires labor costs to be invested in maintenance in the early stage. Once it becomes a dominant group, it can play a role in soil and water conservation and “using grass to suppress grass”
The Zhang * * team pioneered the soil and water control technology of planting Ophiopogon japonicus with inclined holes on tea garden walls. As a herbaceous plant with well-developed roots, planting Ophiopogon japonicus in areas where soil erosion may occur in the tea garden can achieve the goal of maintaining soil and preventing high-quality soil erosion in the tea garden.
Ophiopogon japonicus is tolerant to barrenness, drought, shade, evergreen, low, and minimally invasive, with strong soil and water conservation capabilities
Planting slope protection plants and weeding themselves are not in conflict. Ophiopogon japonicus, which has grown into a dominant group, also has the effect of “using grass to suppress grass”. It can occupy the growth space of weeds and save costs for manual weeding in the later stage.
Studies have shown that tea gardens with intercropping of Ophiopogon japonicus have significantly higher soil moisture content, organic matter, available nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium content than single cropping tea gardens.
This technology has been demonstrated and popularized in Zhenghe County, Mount Wuyi City, Jianyang District, Fu’an City and other major tea producing areas in our province, with more than 30000 mu. The water and soil loss of the demonstration tea garden has been comprehensively controlled, and the amount of water and soil loss has decreased significantly.
02 Choose on-site composting between non fertilizing and non fertilizing soil to achieve fertilization freedom
At present, the improved Wuyi farming method is more widely used in the Mount Wuyi Zhengyan area. In the traditional farming method, it has improved the shortcomings of the shoot retaining method, no or less application of base fertilizer, and no leaves for spring tea picking.
Some operations of the improved cultivation method are no longer applicable to the present, such as using soil. The purpose of entering the fertile soil, humus soil, and differentiated accumulated soil on the surface of non tea fields is to thicken the cultivation layer and improve the soil.
After visiting the soil, the cultivation layer thickens and the tree trunks are deeply buried in the soil
However, from the current perspective, one is that the scenic area has explicitly prohibited the entry of foreign soil, and the other is that the soil from the “outer mountains” entering the Zhengyan area may change the soil structure of Zhengyan and bring in foreign species, causing unpredictable and serious consequences.
Compared to the “outer mountain” soil, there is a more natural “disguised guest soil” inside Zhengyan. This method is commonly used at the bottom of pits, where the erosion of water between rocks and the weathering of valley winds continuously erode and lose soluble minerals in the mountain, ultimately leading to sedimentation at the bottom of the pit. This can also result in the removal of surface fertile soil and improve soil quality.
The organic matter from the rock walls on both sides of the mountain field flows into the bottom of the pit through “disguised guest soil” to nourish the tea trees
However, the mountain farm requires a large amount of raw material production, and it is not enough for the mountain farm to work hard alone. It also needs some external assistance.
Taking the eliminated practice of “not applying or applying less base fertilizer” in the Wuyi farming method as an example, this predatory farming management system of only taking and not applying is not advisable. Not applying or applying too little fertilizer can lead to weakened tree vigor and low tea garden yields. If excessive fertilization is applied, it will impose a burden on the tea leaves that is difficult to digest, damage the soil structure, and thus affect the quality of tea leaves.
In that case, we can also choose to compost on site to achieve organic fertilizer freedom between not fertilizing and using soil.
The core logic of the high-efficiency degradation bacterial composting technology for tung oil fruit is the same as that of guest soil, which is to use locally sourced materials. The difference is that millennium tung organic fertilizer does not have the same hidden dangers as foreign soil, and the labor cost consumed will be lower.
The millennium paulownia tree, which is selected from tung oil trees for organic fertilizer, not only has the advantage of rapid growth, but also can bloom and bear fruit within three years, with a huge biomass.
When high-yielding, each plant can produce five to six hundred pounds of fruit, and the biomass of a few thousand year old paulownia trees can meet the organic fertilizer needs of one acre of tea garden. Compared with general organic fertilizers, thousand year old paulownia organic fertilizers have the characteristics of high potassium, high magnesium, and high calcium, which can improve the quality of rock tea. It can be known that after the production of millennium tung organic fertilizer, some nitrogen fertilizer will be added to ensure the nutritional needs of tea trees.
Before degradation, tung oil trees contain a certain amount of toxins and fats. The degradation bacteria selected by Zhang’s team multiple times can degrade the oil and toxins in tung oil trees. In ancient times, the waste from extracting oil from tung trees was used to make organic fertilizers. The extracted tung oil was widely used, ranging from small oil lamps and oil paper umbrellas to shipbuilding.
The fruit of the millennium paulownia tree
As soon as the tung oil fruit lands, it is collected and composted on site, successfully achieving self-sufficiency of organic fertilizer in tea gardens and effectively avoiding soil pollution caused by the use of unknown organic fertilizers.
In addition, intercropping millennial tung trees in the tea garden can, to a certain extent, make up for the pine trees cut down in large numbers due to pine wood nematode disease in Mount Wuyi. Moreover, as a deciduous plant, the thousand year old paulownia tree can provide shade for tea gardens in summer, restore light to tea gardens after shedding leaves in autumn, and also transform into humus in the soil. It can be said that the millennium paulownia tree is a “hexagonal” vegetation that can be utilized in all aspects.
Finally, adding some “technology” to the tea garden may seem simple, but the effectiveness of these projects takes a long time and the initial investment cost is relatively high. For those who have already seen the achievements of our science and technology demonstration park, we would like to say that the brave mountains first enjoy the world!