Timely Handbook

On Tea Growing

|7K)R the many people in New m. Guinea and Australia who are now engaged in, or associated with, the commercial production of tea in the Mt. Hagen area, the Oxford University Press has just produced a most valuable handbook.

Called Tea Growing, the book is one of OUP’s tropical handbooks.

Others in the series concern coffee growing, beekeeping, tea manu facture, coconut growing, extension in rural communities, farming as a business and plant life in West Africa.

The author of Tea Growing, C.

R. Harler, was also the author of the handbook on tea manufacture.

His new book begins with a

description of the tea plant, and goes on to consider such matters as climate, soils, propagation of the tea plant, tea nurseries and transplanting, bush formation and pruning, pluck ing, manuring, management of tea soils, irrigation, shade trees and green crops, pests and diseases, and labour needs.

The author says: “The account of the growing of tea which follows is dealt with against the background of the pioneer planting days. . . .

“The facts regarding field opera tions in tea planting now extend over such a wide range of conditions, from Georgia, USSR, lat. 43 deg. N, to Corrientes, Argentina, lat. 27 deg.

S, that the most suitable type of bush and the best field procedure can be predicted for any tea country.’' (TEA GROWING. Oxford University Press. $A4.25.)