Studies of waste tea garden soils (Part 1)1)

I. Introduction

In Uji district, Kyoto Pref., the most famous place of tea production in Japan, tea gardens, particularly the refined tea (Gyokuro and Matsucha) gardens, have been producing very low yields. Their features are poor, dotted with withered plants. Such tea gardens are named the waste tea gardens. ōsugi²⁾ and Yoshie³⁾ had made research on these phenomena since 1930 and ascribed them to some defects of soil properties.