Tea seed barie can be established in tea growing soil and locality. The site should be high land and well drained. Tea seed baries are rarely visited by long distance flying insects and thus pollination is mostly carried out by small crawling insects with short flying range. Also pollens of tea are not air borne.They are sticky and heavy. Therefore, the seed baries can be established near any plucking tea areas. However, it is better to keep the seed baries away from the plucking area maintaining a gap of 15 to 20 meters.
Seeds are borne over the entire surface of a seed bearer. So spacing of planting in a seed barie should be such that the trees at maturity do not overlap, but just touch each other. The spacing of the seed bearers should be according to the spreading habit of the parents. The approximate spacing for different types of parents is shown below:
Table: Spacing of seed bearing trees and trees per ha under different systems of planting
Habit of parents | Spacing (m x m) | System | No. of trees per ha |
Spreading | 5.5 x 5.5 | Square | 330 |
Triangular | 382 | ||
6.0 x 6.0 | Square | 277 | |
Triangular | 300 | ||
Erect | 3.5 x3.5 | Square | 816 |
Triangular | 998 | ||
4.5 x 4.5 | Square | 494 | |
Triangular | 500 |
The design of planting should be such that the same parent is not repeated at the adjacent site. A particular parent should be planted alternatively as shown in Fig. below:
A | B | A | B | A | B |
B | A | B | A | B | A |
A | B | A | B | A | B |
B | A | B | A | B | A |
Square Design of Planting (A and B –Parents)
B | A | B | A | B | A | ||||||
A | B | A | B | A | B | ||||||
A | B | A | B | A | B | ||||||
B | A | B | A | B | A |
Triangular Design of Planting