LAYING OUT A GARDEN.
By this I mean, so dividing it when first made into parts, that
later the said parts shall be easily recognised, and separately or
differently treated, as they may require it.
The usual custom is to begin at one end of a plantation, and dig it
right through to the other. In the same way with the pruning and
plucking, and I believe the system is a very bad one. Different
portions of gardens require different treatment, inasmuch as they
differ in soil, and otherwise. One part of a plantation is much more
prolific of weeds than another--how absurd that it should be cleaned no
oftener! This is only one exemplification of difference of treatment,
but in many ways it is necessary, most of all in plucking leaf.
All parts of a plantation, owing in some places to the different ages
of the plants, in others to the variety in the soil and its productive
powers, in others to slopes or to aspect, do not yield leaf equally,
that is, flush does not follow flush with equal rapidity. In some
places (supposing each part to be picked when the flush is ready) seven
days’ interval will exist between the flushes, in others nine, ten, or
twelve; but no attention, as a rule, is paid to this. The pickers have
finished the garden at the west end, the east end is again ready, and
when done, the middle part will be taken in hand, be it ready or be it
not! It may be that the middle part flushes quicker than any other; in
this case the flush will be more than mature when it is taken, in fact
it will have begun to harden; or it may be the middle part does _not_
flush as quickly as the others; in this case it will be picked before
it is ready, that is, when the flush is too young, and the yield will
consequently be smaller.
I believe the yield of a plantation may be largely increased by
attending to this. Every Tea estate should be divided into gardens of,
say, about five to ten acres each.[15] If no natural division exists,
small roads to act as such should be made. More than this cannot be
done when the plantation is first laid out, but when later the plants
yield, any difference between the productive powers of different
parts of the same garden should be noted, and these divided off into
sections. To do this latter with roads would take up too much space,
and small masonry pillars, whitewashed, are the best. Four of these,
one at each corner of a section, are enough, and they need not be
more than 3 feet high and 1 foot square. Thus each garden may, where
necessary, be divided into two sections, which, in a 300-acre estate,
partitioned off into thirty gardens, would give about forty to sixty
sections. No matter where a section may be, directly the flush on it
is ready it should be picked. Where the soil on any one garden is much
the same, and observation shows the plants all over it flush equally,
it may be left all in one. I only lay down the principle, and I am
very certain it works well, the proof of which is that, where I have
practised it, some sections during the season give three, four, and
five flushes more than others. Had the usual plan of picking from one
end to the other been adopted, they would have been all _forced_ to
give the same number; in other words, the said extra flushes would have
been lost, and further loss occasioned by some flushes being taken
before they were ready, others after a portion of the tender leaf had
hardened.
The best plan is simply to number the gardens from 1 upwards, and the
sections in each garden the same way. Thus supposing No. 5 garden is
divided into three sections, they will be known respectively as 5-1,
5-2, and 5-3. This is the best way for the natives, and I find they
soon learn to designate each section. I have a man whose special duty
(though he has other work also) it is to see each day which sections
are ready to pick the following, and those, and those alone, are
picked. Practice soon teaches the number of pickers required for any
given number of sections, and that number only are put to the work.
If a portion is not completed that day, it is the first taken in hand
the next, and if any day on no sections is the flush ready, no leaf is
picked the following.
Apart from leaf-picking, the garden and section plan detailed is useful
in many ways. Each garden, if not each section which most requires
it, is dug, pruned, or manured at the best time, and any spot on the
plantation is easily designated. The plan facilitates the measurement
of work, and enables correct lists of the flushes gathered to be kept.
It is thus seen which gardens yield best, and the worst can, by extra
manuring, be brought to equal those.
In short, the advantages are many, too numerous to detail.
Of course all this can be better done on a flat garden than on one
planted on slopes, and though it may not be possible to work it out
as much in detail on the latter, still a good deal in that way can be
done, and I strongly recommend it.
In laying out a plantation keep it all as much together as possible,
the more it is in one block the easier it is supervised, the cheaper
it is worked. Still do not, with a view to this, take in any bad land,
for bad land will never pay.
Let your lines of Tea plants, as far as practicable, run with
geometrical regularity. You will later find, both in measuring work
and picking leaf, great advantages therefrom. In gardens where the
lines are not regular portions are continually being passed over in
leaf-picking, and thereby not only is the present flush from such parts
lost, but the following is also retarded.
If your different gardens are so situated that the roads through them,
that is from one garden to the other, can be along _the side_ of any
garden without increasing the length of the road, by all means adopt
that route. There is no such good boundary for a garden as a road that
is being continually traversed. It will save many rupees by preventing
the encroachment of jungle into a garden, and more space is thus also
given for plants. It is, however, of no use to do it if a road through
the middle of a garden is shorter, as coolies _will_ always take the
shortest route.
The lines of plants on sloping ground should neither run up and down,
nor directly across the slope. If they run up and down, gutters or
water-courses will form between the lines, and much additional earth
will be washed away thereby. If they run right across the hill the same
thing will occur _between the trees in each line_, and the lower side
of each plant will have its roots laid very bare. It is on all slopes
a choice of evils, but if the lines are laid diagonally across the
hill, so that the slope _along the lines_ shall be a moderate one, the
evil is reduced as far as it can be by any arrangement of the plants.
No, I forgot; there is one other thing. The closer the lines to each
other, and the closer the plants in the lines to each other, in short,
the more thickly the ground on slopes is planted the less will be the
wash, for stems and roots retain the soil in its place, and the more
there are the greater the advantage.
Where slopes are steep (though, remember, steep slopes are to be
avoided) terracing may be resorted to with advantage, as the washing
down of the soil is much checked by it.
On flat land, of course, it does not really signify in which directions
the lines run, but such a garden looks best if, when the roads are
straight, the lines run at right angles to them.
In laying out a garden, choose a central spot with water handy for
your factory, bungalow, and all your buildings; let your Tea-houses
be as close to your dwelling-house as possible, so that during the
manufacturing time you can be in and out at all hours of the day
and night. Much of your success will depend upon this. Let all your
buildings be as near to each other as they can, but still far enough
apart, that any one building may burn without endangering others. You
need not construct any Tea-buildings until the third year.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] A garden I have just finished in the Western Dooars is 300 acres
in extent, all on flat land without any breaks in the cultivation, and
all divided into sections of 5 acres each. Being in one large block it
is not divided into gardens at all, only sections.