Tagged: crop rotation

From a Sleeping Seed to a Four-Year Field

Before a single leaf is cut for the heap, a rooibos field has already had a stranger life than the calm cup suggests. Here is how the red bush actually gets planted, grown, and rested, from a seed that refuses to wake up to a field given years off to recover.

Rooibos Has Three Real Insect Pests, and Almost Nothing Registered to Spray on Them

An ARC survey once counted 110 insect species living on cultivated rooibos. Only three do real damage, a leafhopper, a looper, and a root-boring moth, and South Africa has registered almost no chemical product for any of them by name.