Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 387 Special Tiles

Then use gravity to tamp these stones mixed with a certain amount of soil to ensure that the terraces will not collapse after the tea trees are planted. In this way, the terraces were built piece by piece. Because it was really time-consuming, the construction of the terraces took more than a month.

In order to facilitate management, Hualei also made the terraces as equal in height and distance as possible, which would make it easier to lay bamboo pipes.

After the terraces on the two slopes are completed, the next step is to tidy up the east and south slopes. However, the east and south slopes do not need to be terraced, which is relatively simple. However, Hualei thought for a long time whether the tea trees should be planted along the slope or across the slope.

It turns out that there are two ways to plant tea trees on a hillside. One is to plant ridges along the slope, that is, the direction of the ridges is parallel to the slope, and the other is to plant ridges across the slope, that is, the direction of the ridges is perpendicular to the slope.

Planting tea trees on sloping ridges can transform the natural landform of the barren mountain, eliminate or reduce the slope of the ground, make it easier to obtain water for irrigation, and also help drainage during the rainy season.

Moreover, the method of planting tea trees on sloping ridges is not only convenient for farming and saves labor, but also conducive to ventilation and light transmission in the fields, enabling the tea trees to better absorb sunlight and grow better.

However, there are many disadvantages to planting on ridges and slopes. The quality of tea varies greatly, and the tea output is relatively small, so it is difficult to produce high-quality tea.

Slope ridges are usually not conducive to water and soil conservation and are prone to soil erosion. The slope ridge planting method is mostly used in areas with low rainfall intensity and relatively uniform seasonal distribution of precipitation.

Compared with ridge cultivation along the slope, ridge cultivation on the cross slope has the characteristics of water and soil conservation and can slow down soil erosion. Therefore, this method is often used in areas with insufficient precipitation or large seasonal changes in precipitation.

Moreover, the tea grown on the horizontal ridges receives more even light than the tea grown on the parallel ridges, and has better quality and a richer aroma.

After carefully reading the regional annals of Shangjing City and recalling the climate changes he had experienced in Shangjing City in recent years, Hualei decided to plant tea trees on horizontal slopes in order to meet the requirements of tea quality.

A month and a half later, the slopes of Xishan were finally almost finished, so Hualei began to lay bamboo pipes for watering Xishan.

Because of the terraces, laying bamboo pipes is much more troublesome. Because each terrace needs to have an inlet and outlet for water flow, so that timely responses can be made in case of drought or flooding. Therefore, the workload of laying water pipes is much greater.

However, there is no other way. If we only rely on natural rainfall, we cannot meet the growth requirements of tea trees, and tea trees may be more delicate than other crops. So no matter how difficult it is, the buds can only bite the bullet and go ahead.

In order to meet the watering needs of the tea trees, Hualei temporarily dug a small pond on the top of the mountain, which was only used for irrigation and there was no need to consider raising fish fry or anything like that.

There is no plan to install any water wheels. We will just rely on the property of water flowing to lower places to irrigate the upper part of Xishan Mountain.

The water pipes were laid section by section, and slowly, spider webs began to crawl all over the mountain. In order to irrigate the terraced fields, Hualei went to the pottery workshop in the north city district and ordered a batch of tiles with special shapes.

Compared with ordinary tiles used to build houses, the two sides are raised higher to form a semicircle. Then the raised sides of the tiles are facing upwards and stacked up one by one, just like the tiles on the roof. On rainy days, water can flow along the corrugations to transport water.

In this way, at the bends of each terrace, these tiles can be used to replace the curved bamboo water pipes, making it more convenient to deliver water to the terraces. Moreover, these tiles save a lot of money compared to using blue bricks to build ditches. Of course, the effect is slightly worse than that of blue brick ditches.

In this way, bamboo pipes and tiles worked together to lay the irrigation pipes on the West Mountain. While laying the pipes, Hualei asked another group of pioneers to deep-plow the land, plowing it about two feet deep, breaking it into small pieces, and plowing it again.

Because tea trees are perennial, deep-rooted crops with a long growth period, high yield, and large nutrient consumption, and the land on the West Mountain is poor and hard, deep plowing and fertilization must be carried out before planting tea trees, which will help their future growth.

If you just dig holes to plant tea trees without deep plowing for the sake of convenience, the height of the mature tea trees will be more than twice as big, and the root system will be one and a half times as big.

This is not conducive to the growth of tea trees in the later stage. In order to ensure the growth of tea trees in the later stage and to make full use of these pioneers, Hualei chose the more troublesome deep tillage planting method.

It was another big slog, with shovels and rakes all in action. When the water pipes were almost laid, the wasteland on the west mountain was basically plowed over. After being exposed to the scorching sun for a few days to fully disinfect the soil, they began to dig trenches and ridges, with a row spacing of about half a meter and a trench depth of about one and a half feet.

After the ridges were raised, the soil was fertilized with base fertilizer. For the delicate tea trees, Hualei also fermented the chicken and duck manure according to Fu Bo's teachings. First, the chicken and duck manure was fully dried and piled together for fermentation.

The height of the fermentation pile is between 1.5 and 2 meters, the width is between 2 and 3 meters, and the length can reach more than 3 meters. Then a thick layer of straw is covered on the top of the chicken and duck manure pile to allow the manure pile to heat up and ferment naturally.

During the fermentation of chicken manure, it is necessary to ensure that the chicken manure has good air permeability and the water content is kept within a certain range to ensure the humidity required for fermentation. When the temperature of the manure pile rises to a very hot level, the straw should be uncovered to start cooling it down.

After a few hours, when the temperature of the fermentation pile drops to a certain level, it needs to be covered with thick straw again. After repeating this process two or three times, the chicken and duck manure can be fermented into organic fertilizer. In order to ferment better, the flower buds also add some cut-up straw, corn stalks, etc. to ferment together.

And during the fermentation process, the fermentation pile is often stirred and ventilated to improve the fermentation effect of chicken and duck feces. After a period of time, the chicken and duck feces have been effectively converted into the organic fertilizer most needed by tea trees, which is both environmentally friendly and economical.

Then the fermented organic fertilizer is transported to the barren hills, evenly spread in the planting trenches of the tea trees, and then covered with soil about one palm deep.

00001. The tea tree planting method is adopted for the flower buds, because Xishan is surrounded by mountains, the sunlight and wind are worse than those of tea gardens planted on flat land.