Tea growing becomes popular in UK in 1940s

Following Winston Churchill s exaltation s to grow tea as part of the Dig for Victory campaign . Tea growing remains popular in the UK and due to lower transport costs captures part of the European tea market and significant part of the UK tea market post war
 
Climatically, tea belongs to the monsoon lands where high temperatures, long growing season and heavy rainfall help the growth of tea plants. A temperature of 21°C during the growing season of not less than eight months is ideal.
Not what one thinks of when one thinks of Britain, eh?
 
Major boost to the glass industry; tea plants need warm and wet conditions, Britain can only really guarantee the last half of that, most British tea plantations are going to be greenhouse based.
 
I actually saw some BBC documentary that featured a tea plantation in what I believe was Cardiff. They interviewed the farmer and he said their yields were good, so it might be possible to do it earlier
 
Climate isn't the problem, cheap labour is - you really need to pick the young buds, so mechanizing it is hard. The UK was at pretty much full employment for some years after WW2, while shipping is dirt cheap per tonne mile (to the extent that a ship from India to the UK may be cheaper than driving it from the docks to the supermarket). That's a really tough economic obstacle - labour in the UK is always going to be expensive, while transcontinental shipping is only going to get cheaper.
 
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