This backyard tea bush is ready for picking. It is about 10 years old and one of our healthiest and attractive plants.
As you can see, it is covered in bright green shoots. Only these fresh and tender shoots are used for tea, the rest of the older, tough leaves are left alone.
The tea plant puts out a flush of tea shoots in the spring through summer, 3-4 flushes per year. The first flush is the most sought after, with a delicate and fragrant flavor, best suited for green tea.
I enjoy picking tea, a simple and relaxing task which has great benefit. Though tea is a commodity, having fresh tea from the backyard is simply unbeatable!
The shoots with 2-3 leaves and the bud are picked and placed in a loosely woven bamboo basket. They sit in there for a few hours to wilt, a process that softens the leaves and removes some moisture.
After they are sufficiently wilted, I roll the leaves between my hands to bruise them. This breaks up the cell walls of the leaves and allows the fragrant essential oils to extract unto the leaf surface so that they are better infused during brewing. This process also removes moisture and can shape the leaves if desired.
Bruising the leaves or damaging them in any way starts the process of oxidization which is responsible for turning tea leaves into oolong or black tea. Oolong is partially oxidized while black tea is fully oxidized. Heating the leaves stops oxidization.
Since I'm making a green tea, I fire the leaves in a wok (used only for tea) to stop the oxidization, remove moisture and shape the leaves. After a few minutes in the wok, they are ready to cool off and then dried in the oven at low temperature.
A slow dry is preferable as higher temperatures evaporate the essential oils. The stems of the shoots take a bit longer to dry.
The smell of this tea harvest has a very pleasant, floral fragrance.
The act of picking tea stimulates the plant to create more shoots, so in a week or two there will be more tea to harvest!