Introduction
Home grown produce tastes better right. Well guess what, coffee is no different. Fresh, home-roasted coffee is on another level and until you try it you just won’t know what you’re missing.
G’day
Come with me on a journey from seed to cup, as I share my hobby and my passion of the last ten years; growing, roasting and of course drinking my own home-grown coffee.
In this series you’ll learn how to nurture young plants and when and how to harvest. I’ll explain the processing and home roasting techniques I’ve gathered over that time, step by step. But most of all I want to share the fun of home roasting and of course the enormous satisfaction of tasting these unique flavours and aromas.
Whether you’re a seasoned coffee lover or just starting your addiction, with each post, I hope you’ll be inspired to grow some or at least roast some delicious coffee at home.
- The best climate for coffee
- Seeds or seedlings
- Planting coffee seedlings
- Coffee flowering and fruiting
- How to prune coffee
- Watering and fertiliser
- Pests and disease
- How many coffee trees do I need?
Lets start the series with how to produce these magic little beans out of, well, thin air.
1. The best climate for coffee
Given the right conditions coffee is a very hardy, easy to grow small tree. It’s native habitat is tropical highlands, but it’ll grow quite happily in a much wider range. For commercial growers the ideal is an average daily temperature between about 18-28C and about 1500+ mm of rainfall. So fairly mild and fairly moist.
If you don’t get at least 1000 mm rain or you have a long dry season, then some extra watering will help. If your winters are cold and frosty you’ll need to grow them in pots and move them around because they wont survive a hard frost, but they can do quite well pots.
Up into the thirties like I get here and they’ll want little afternoon shade, plenty of moisture and plenty of mulch. Into the 40s and even with enough water and shade they’ll probably struggle. But, once established, coffee is a pretty tough plant and well worth a go even in marginal conditions.
2. Seeds or seedlings
To plant from seed they need to be fresh. Coffee seeds tend to lose viability fairly quickly, within a few months. Get fresh ripe cherries if you know someone with a tree. Or just dig up a few seedlings from underneath. I’d try both if you can find them. Otherwise seedling are readily available on line these days and you often see them at nurseries or markets. The green beans you buy for roasting are at a minimum several months old and aren’t really worth trying with; you’re better off roasting them.
For planting remove the skin and separate the two beans otherwise the two seedlings crowd each other. Also without the skins there’s lower risk of mould or rotting. Press into potting mix and keep moist. Fresh seed can take 6-8 weeks to germinate, up to 3 or 4 months if they’re a bit older or in cooler conditions. So a bit of patience is needed. Plant out at 6-12 months or when they’ve grown several pairs of true leaves. I grew these from seed and this I dug up from under an older tree.
Lets get ’em in.
3. Planting coffee seedlings
Coffee trees tend to grow tall and narrow and don’t really spread much, so plant about 2 m apart. They’re quite shade tolerant but for maximum fruit production they want full sun. If you have really hot summers some western shade should result in a better crop. They also like shelter from strong wind.
Now, have you heard the old saying; If you buy a $10 plant you need to dig a $20 hole?Well that applies especially to coffee, aim for 40 x 40cm and loosen the bottom. They love rich, well-drained, slightly acidic soil, high in organic matter so dig in some compost. I added lime to raise my pH a little too.
Tip #1 Don’t scrimp on the planting hole. You want your seedlings to rapidly grow a deep root system and get off to a flying start.
Make a bowl shape to retain water, add heaps of mulch and fertilise regularly to keep them vigorous. Older trees and shaded trees naturally start to shed their lower leaves and branches. But if you let young trees dry out or get too hot or don’t feed them enough they’ll start to lose those lower leaves and stems sooner. And that’s exactly what you don’t want. I’ll come back to why that’s so important later with Tip #2.
4. Coffee flowering and fruiting
From a healthy seedling to it’s first fruit, enough to make your first few cups, it’s only 2 or 3 years. Then into maximum production after only 4 or 5. They are long-lived, 50 years plus and they will eventually grow too tall. 4-5-6 10m or more if you let them and that’s way too tall for easy picking, even with a ladder. So expect to prune them, but there are dwarf varieties too.
These ‘K7’ variety trees start flowering here in SEQ in early Spring, with extra flushes into early summer. Masses of fragrant, white flowers cover the branches and make a dazzling display. Soon after, little green fruit appear and slowly grow to full size. When they ripen they first turn pale yellow, then pale red, then a deep crimson colour when fully ripe. Here, this usually starts mid winter to spring, with some late cherries ripening well into summer.
Each tree needs to be picked several times in a season as the cherries ripen in turn. When they are fully ripe and a deep red they soften a little and come away from the stem a bit more easily. They are edible and the thin layer of flesh gets quite sweet.
They are beautiful trees and make a great privacy hedge or even a feature, landscape tree, especially when they’re in full flower or laden with bright red fruit. There are yellow varieties too, but I stick with red ones just because it’s a little easier to tell when they’re fully ripe.
Now coming back to:
Tip #2 and those lower leaves and stems. You want to get them off to a good start and keep them growing vigorously. Struggling plants, like older plants, tend to start losing those lower leaves and stems sooner and that means you lose the easy to pick, low-hanging fruit too. As they get taller and the lower trunk becomes bare and the growth gets higher, you’ll find yourself picking above your head then up a ladder, sooner than otherwise. So Tip #2 take extra care when they’re young and in hot dry weather to retain as much of that lower foliage as possible because picking from the ground is way easier than picking from up a ladder.
5. How to prune coffee
Sooner or later you will need to prune them down to size and there are a few ways to go. One method is to just keep them lopped off at head-height and trim of the new shoots. A second, and this really needs to be done to every coffee tree eventually, is to prune them off hard at about knee height. Called stumping it renews their growth and vigour. They readily re-shoot and you can just rub off the new shoots, leaving 2-3 strong leaders to regrow. Two years later and they’re producing fruit again. After each harvest, I’ll often stump down the tallest few. I have about thirty trees so only about twenty are actually producing in a season.
6. Watering and fertiliser
To keep them growing vigorously give them some compost and maybe a handful of complete fertiliser, plus extra mulch a couple of times a year and make sure they never fully dry out.
7. Pests and disease
A few cherries are lost to pests, too few to worry about really and in my climate with the K7 variety I’ve seen zero disease. As I mentioned they’re pretty tough. I did read some places have a risk of them becoming a pest themselves. I keep an eye on the surrounds here and I don’t see any growing, but bear that in mind and maybe check with local weed lists.
I have had a couple blow over in strong wind, but I think they were a bit root bound in their pots and probably never really established great root systems.
8. How many coffee trees do I need?
To be self sufficient? Two people drinking 2 large cups each per day at 18gm per cup, about 26kg per year?
I started with 7 seedlings and expanded by propagating a few from seed but mostly by just transplanting some from underneath the first 7. That quickly built up to about a total of 30. With about 20 productive trees, each year I produced about 30kg: all we can drink plus some to give away.
It’s hard to be precise, but here is how my cycle works on average:
I have about 20 productive trees, plus 10 that are pruned and not producing. Of those 10, 5 were pruned last year and they’ll start fruiting next year. The other 5 were just pruned, so they’ll take 2 years before they fruit again. Then each year prune the tallest 5.
I didn’t set out to be fully self-sufficient in coffee I just wanted to grow some of my own. But home-grown and roasted coffee tastes so delicious and it was so much fun and so easy it just sort of happened.
Apart from the occasional cafe, all I drink is my own free coffee.
Conclusion
Not only is this coffee absolutely free it’s absolutely delicious: medium acidity, smooth, nutty, chocolatey flavours with a hint of licorice. Quite often, about halfway through my first cup in the morning, I find myself in awe of nature at how something so amazing comes out of just dirt and the thin air. This is a very satisfying and rewarding hobby apart from the savings and I truly hope some of you are inspired by this series to have a go yourself.
We’ve watched our trees grow and flower and now finally the fruit is turning red. In the next post we’ll be picking and pulping it.