March 9, 2026
Did you know that there is a tea plantation in the U.S.? We visited Charleston Tea Garden to see the American grown tea and the process that turns leaves into the tea you buy. We mistimed our visit by a good month to see the equipment running though. Tea is harvested April to October.
Plants are hand transplanted from seedlings grown in a greenhouse the the fields because of their delicate leaves. The leaves are harvested using a unique piece of equipment designed from parts of equipment used in cotton and tobacco harvesting. The plants can be harvested up to seven or eight times during a growing season. Full fields can contain over 20 thousand plants. It takes five pounds of fresh leaves to make one pound of tea.
The tea plant, which is a member of the camellia family, loves the sandy soil and the hot, humid climate in the Charleston area. The same plant grown elsewhere would not taste the same. Hmm...we heard that with Vidalia Onions.
Our tour guide recommended that we stop and see the Angel Oak tree on our way back to the mainland. We're glad he suggested it. Angel Oak is one massive tree.
Despite the awful traffic on essentially the only road to the island, we were glad to see two unique things. We would, however, recommend going on a day when the processing plant is running.
