In view of the large labor intensity of the excavation machinery in the existing mountain tea orchard, an electric self-propelled digger with driving power and automatic feed stroke and reset stroke was designed. In this paper, the digger is divided into five parts: the burrowing mechanism, the automatic lifting mechanism, the travelling mechanism, the supporting mechanism and the control system, meanwhile, the design and selection of the key components and the prototype manufacturing and assembly was completed. According to the field test results, the average burrowing time for a single operation of the digger was 50.7 s, the energy consumption for a single effective burrowing operation was 6.38 Wh, the average depth of the hole was 392.5 mm, the average hole diameter is 303 mm, and the orchard road speed was 1.237 m/s, the mud road speed was 1.202 m/s, and it can smoothly passed the 15° slope. In the burrowing operation, the feed and return movements do not require manual operation, which can reduce the labor intensity.