If you're thinking about starting a garden, the first thing you need to consider is what type of garden you will have. There are many different choices and often it can be hard to pick just one, but hopefully you can narrow it down. But by narrowing it down, you'll make the gardening experience easier on yourself and the plants. If all your plants are similar, then it shouldn't be very hard to care for them all. So here are some of the main garden ideas for you to choose from.
If you're just looking for something to look nice in your yard, you'll want a flower garden. These are usually filled with perennial flower. Perennial flowers are flowers which stay healthy year-round. They're basically weeds because of their hardiness, only nice looking. Different areas and climates have different flowers which are considered perennials. If you do a quick internet search for your area, you can probably find a list of flowers that will bring your flower garden to life. These usually only require work in the planting stage - after that, the flower take care of themselves. The only downside to this is that you don't have any product to show for it.
Another choice for your garden is to have a vegetable garden. These usually require a little more work and research than a flower garden, but can be much more rewarding. No matter what time of the year it is, you can usually find one vegetable that is still prospering. That way you can have your garden be giving you produce almost every day of the year! When starting a vegetable garden, you should build it with the thought in mind that you will be adding more types of veggies in later. This will help your expandability. Once all your current crops are out of season, you won't be stuck with almost nowhere to put the new crops. A vegetable garden is ideal for someone who wants some produce, but doesn't want to devote every waking hour to perfecting their garden.
One of the more difficult types of gardens to manage is a fruit garden. It's definitely the most high-maintenance. When growing fruits, many more pests will be attracted due to the sweetness. You not only have to deal with having just the right dirt and fertilizer, you have to deal with choosing a pesticide that won't kill whoever eats the fruits. Your fruit garden will probably not produce year-round. The soil needs to be just right for the plants to grow, and putting in another crop during its off-season could be disastrous to its growth process. If you're willing to put lots of work into maintaining a garden, then a fruit garden could be a good choice for you.
So now that we've outlined some of the main garden types that people choose, I hope you can make a good decision. Basically, the garden type comes down to what kind of product you want, and how much work you want to put into it. If you're looking for no product with no work, go with a flower garden. If you want lots of delicious product, but you are willing to spend hours in your garden each day, then go for a fruit garden. Just make sure you don't get into something you can't handle!
Showing posts with label chinese gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chinese gardening. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
Gardening Insight: Chinese Tea and Its Production
As an added insight into Gardening, we would like to explore the Chinese culture and their production of tea.
Chinese has been drinking tea for approximately 4,000 years. Along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar, the Chinese considered tea as one of the seven necessities to begin a day.
Types of Tea
The Chinese tea may be classified into five types according to the different methods by which it is processed. Here are the classifications:
• Green Tea – is the variety which keeps the original color of the tea leaves without fermentation during processing.
• Black Tea – This is known as “red Chinese tea”, the type which is fermented before baking. Note also that black tea is a later variety developed on the basis of the green tea.
• Wulong Tea – Also known as Oolong Chinese tea, this category represents a variety half way between the green and the black teas. This is being made after partial fermentation.
• Compressed Tea – is the kind of Chinese tea which is compressed and hardened into a certain shape. Many people considered this as good for transport and storage and are mainly supplied to the ethnic minorities living in the border areas of the country.
• Scented Tea – This kind of Chinese tea is known as “scented” because it is made by mixing fragrant flowers in the tea leaves in the course of processing. The flowers that are commonly used for this purpose include the jasmine and magnolia, among others.
The Tea Production
Chinese has maintained that a new tea plant must grow for five years before its leaves can be picked. The trunk of the old plant must then be cut off to force new stems to grow out of the roots in the following year. This sort of rehabilitation must be repeated as this allows the tea plant to serve for about a hundred years.
The season of tea picking generally depends on the local climate and it varies from area to area. As you all know, China is the homeland of tea. It has tea shrubs as early as five to six thousand years ago, and human cultivation of these plants dates back two thousand years. Today, it was reported that tea is produced in vast areas of China from Hainan Island down in the extreme south to Shandong Province in the north, from Tibet in the southwest to Taiwan across the Straits. To sum up, the Chinese tea grows at more than 20 provinces.
On the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, where the famous green tea Longjing comes from, it was reported that the picking starts from the end of March and lasts through October. A skilled woman picker can only gather 600 grams of these green tea leaves in a day.
After the harvest, the new leaves must be parched in tea cauldrons. Accordingly, this work has now been largely mechanized, although the top grade Longjing tea still has to be stir-parched by hand, doing only 250 grams every half hour. Then, the tea cauldrons are heated electrically to a temperature of about 25 degree centigrade or 74 degree Fahrenheit. It then takes four pounds of fresh Chinese tea leaves to produce one pound of parched Chinese tea.
For the processes of grinding, parching, rolling, shaping and drying, different kinds of machines have been developed and built. This work turned out about 100 kilograms of finished Chinese tea an hour, relieving the workers from much of their drudgery.
Chinese has been drinking tea for approximately 4,000 years. Along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar, the Chinese considered tea as one of the seven necessities to begin a day.
Types of Tea
The Chinese tea may be classified into five types according to the different methods by which it is processed. Here are the classifications:
• Green Tea – is the variety which keeps the original color of the tea leaves without fermentation during processing.
• Black Tea – This is known as “red Chinese tea”, the type which is fermented before baking. Note also that black tea is a later variety developed on the basis of the green tea.
• Wulong Tea – Also known as Oolong Chinese tea, this category represents a variety half way between the green and the black teas. This is being made after partial fermentation.
• Compressed Tea – is the kind of Chinese tea which is compressed and hardened into a certain shape. Many people considered this as good for transport and storage and are mainly supplied to the ethnic minorities living in the border areas of the country.
• Scented Tea – This kind of Chinese tea is known as “scented” because it is made by mixing fragrant flowers in the tea leaves in the course of processing. The flowers that are commonly used for this purpose include the jasmine and magnolia, among others.
The Tea Production
Chinese has maintained that a new tea plant must grow for five years before its leaves can be picked. The trunk of the old plant must then be cut off to force new stems to grow out of the roots in the following year. This sort of rehabilitation must be repeated as this allows the tea plant to serve for about a hundred years.
The season of tea picking generally depends on the local climate and it varies from area to area. As you all know, China is the homeland of tea. It has tea shrubs as early as five to six thousand years ago, and human cultivation of these plants dates back two thousand years. Today, it was reported that tea is produced in vast areas of China from Hainan Island down in the extreme south to Shandong Province in the north, from Tibet in the southwest to Taiwan across the Straits. To sum up, the Chinese tea grows at more than 20 provinces.
On the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, where the famous green tea Longjing comes from, it was reported that the picking starts from the end of March and lasts through October. A skilled woman picker can only gather 600 grams of these green tea leaves in a day.
After the harvest, the new leaves must be parched in tea cauldrons. Accordingly, this work has now been largely mechanized, although the top grade Longjing tea still has to be stir-parched by hand, doing only 250 grams every half hour. Then, the tea cauldrons are heated electrically to a temperature of about 25 degree centigrade or 74 degree Fahrenheit. It then takes four pounds of fresh Chinese tea leaves to produce one pound of parched Chinese tea.
For the processes of grinding, parching, rolling, shaping and drying, different kinds of machines have been developed and built. This work turned out about 100 kilograms of finished Chinese tea an hour, relieving the workers from much of their drudgery.
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