Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1894 — AMERICAN TEA. [ARTICLE]

AMERICAN TEA.

Grown In Gardens in South Carolina—A State Agriculturist’s Opinion. Some fine specimens of American tea have been sent from Fayette, N. C., this season to Northern markets, and according to the New York Evening Post, the results of the sales seem to indicate that the culture of this crop in parts of the South may yet lead to large fortunes. It is not generally known that attempts were made to establish tea gardens here before the war, and that since the end of that outbreak systematic efforts have been made to revive the old gardens. Professor Massey, of the State Agricultural College, has been instrumental in trying to spread information amoDg the farmers concerning the culture of tea, and a few have been- induced to put out gardens. The tea sent from the old Smith farm this season brought 80 cents a pound, and some from the Summerville gardens in South Carolina brought as high as $1 a pound. Last summer the tea cut at Summerville amounted to a dozen or two pounds, and this year several times that amount has been sold. Dr. Shepard says that the leaf grown in the south is better for black than for green tea and that the cost of picking is about 25 cents a pound of cured tea. On a large scale, and with the best apparatus for gathering and curing, this cost might be largely reduced. He feels confident, however, that cheap-rate culture could never be made profitable here on account of the lower wages that rule in Japan and India and China, but the higher grade teas can be grown with considerable profit. Dr. Shepard is increasing his tea gardens every year, and when the plants are old enough to yield good crops he proposes to put in good machinery

and start into tea selling for money. Professor Massey says that the finest tea he ever tasted was grown in the Southland he has no doubt but it will be a future profitable crop in the Carolinas. Mr. Jackson, an expert tea grower from Assam, who had charge of the Summerville plantation under General LeDuc, says that with negro labor he can rai-e tea more cheaply than is done with coolie labor in India because of its greater reliability. In regard to the hardiness of the tea plant, all observers seem to agree that north of thirty-five degrees it is unwise to attempt to cultivate it. Around Old Point Comfort, where some plants have been growing more or less feebly lor years, the winters cut the plants badly, and on the upper part of the Delaware Peninsular they were entirely killed. But south of these points, in the piney woods country extending from Kaleigh to the Gulf, tea plants can be grown with great success, and the time may not be far distant when American tea will compete openly in the market with that shipped from China, Japan and India.