Growing coffee

[GrahamK]

I have a similar problem. They should be pruned quite brutely every so often, but when you only have a few trees it's difficult. This year I did a little pruning, removing some of the spears of a 2nd trunk that have got quit large and invasive. Technically I believe you should prune the older trunks and allow newer ones to take over etc.. Read that somewhere..

I like your wide spacing between trees. Mine are quite jungle like now.

GrahamK

[tonyt]

My two 5 feet tall Rojo dwarf 4 year old trees have just had their 13th pick for this year (not many cherries this pick) and there are still some green cherries left - but!! trees have been flowering for 3 weeks:-
So here is my dilemma ..I cannot prune the trees (never been pruned) so the foliage is very dense due to the overlapping of ripening and flowering.
Does anyone else this problem and can you solve it?
I have 3 potted seedlings taken from under the coffee trees (self sown) and they are 150 mm tall growing well.

hi herbie,

i have agonised over pruning for years and picked my fair share of cherries with spiky branches sticking in my eyes from every direction. i planted four trees in 2004 and by 2010 they began dying off. after four trees died in successive years (all in full fruit) i realised they had probably come to their unpruned-use-by date. i planted seedlings to replace them, but have since realised that many plantations don't do it that way - they cut the old trees at the stump and leave one of the risers (the vertically growing branches) to develop into a new stem with new, open branches. that way you get the benefit of an already-established root system.
this year i decided to stump all my (now) six trees except for one seedling. all but one had a riser growing and the one that doesn't will probably grow some soon - all but one i'll pull off. i'll miss a crop next year but the years to follow could be very good.
i know how you feel pruning branches full of blossom, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

[raven3130]

Hi All,
I am growing around 20 plants i a greenhouse in Melbourne. This year i think will be my first year with fruit on my 4 older plants.

They are 4years old but were indoors for a while which is why they didn't fruit last year.
Shane

[tonyt]

always good to see blossoms growing.
early in this thread presso told me that if you want your trees to blossom more or less together you can deny them water while the cherries are fully ripening and then hit them with a lot of sustained watering when you're ready.
i found it works - flowers spring out like magic.

[tonyt]

in november 2016 i cut 5 of my six trees at the stump so as to get a new tree growing from each stump.
here are pix of the six trees then and now.
note that tree no4 (from the left) was the only one not pruned, because it was a seedling. it still is. the other five trees, using their already established root systems have shot up, leaving lil ole seedling way behind.

[tonyt]

mmm . . . looks like no pix. i'll have to muck around a bit and see why.

[tonyt]

hard pruning pays off

in november 2016 i cut 5 of my six trees at the stump so as to get a new tree growing from each stump.
here are pix of the six trees then and now.
note that tree no4 (from the left) was the only one not pruned, because it was a seedling. it still is. the other five trees, using their already established root systems have shot up, leaving lil ole seedling way behind.

[ubique17]

Hi Everyone - been lurking for a while, but figured it was finally time to say Hello. Have been growing a number of trees down in the back yard here in Brisbane, more for curosity sake, but this year they've finally come of age. Pulped by hand last year, and as romantic as that sounds, well, you all know how that pans out!
Been tinkering around in the garage, and came up with the attached - definately in its prototype testing stage, but does the trick in a jiffy. (was debating buying a $500 pulper from overseas, but this seemed a lot more fun, and didn't draw attention from the wife..) Pretty much took to a push lawn mower with a grinder, wrapped a rubber floor mat around some PVC piping, with a bit of ply for the back board.
Pressure adjustments can be changed via a quick wind of the two bolts. Concept might be of use to those of you hand pulping - keen to see how we can improve it before an actual crop next year. Thinking of setting up over a water wash vessel of some sort to help speed up the process even more - ideas?
As a side - won't roast these up this year, as will more than likely try and grow from this batch - if you're in Brisbane and want a handfull of beans to grow from (from a tough as nails, generally neglected blood line!) drop me a line.

[teacoffee]

Don't worry toni it will be confirmed and tasted coffee

[tonyt]

great idea ubique17. if you can get this working well you'll be famous throughout the land.
the big question is: How well does it separate the pulp from the beans?
i am using a modified meat grinder (see somewhere else in this thread) and it squeezes the cherries well, but there is still the tedious need to separate the beans out by hand.
in your outfit maybe a mesh allowing beans through with a light hose over it to wash off the pulp- might work.
what do you do at the moment?

Hi Everyone - been lurking for a while, but figured it was finally time to say Hello. Have been growing a number of trees down in the back yard here in Brisbane, more for curosity sake, but this year they've finally come of age. Pulped by hand last year, and as romantic as that sounds, well, you all know how that pans out!
Been tinkering around in the garage, and came up with the attached - definately in its prototype testing stage, but does the trick in a jiffy. (was debating buying a $500 pulper from overseas, but this seemed a lot more fun, and didn't draw attention from the wife..) Pretty much took to a push lawn mower with a grinder, wrapped a rubber floor mat around some PVC piping, with a bit of ply for the back board.
Pressure adjustments can be changed via a quick wind of the two bolts. Concept might be of use to those of you hand pulping - keen to see how we can improve it before an actual crop next year. Thinking of setting up over a water wash vessel of some sort to help speed up the process even more - ideas?
As a side - won't roast these up this year, as will more than likely try and grow from this batch - if you're in Brisbane and want a handfull of beans to grow from (from a tough as nails, generally neglected blood line!) drop me a line.

[tonyt]

stump your old trees

an update on stumping my coffee trees.
i found out by bitter experience that coffee trees (at least mine) seem to dry up and die after about 9, 10, 11 years.
i was replacing them with seedlings, but in nov 2016 i cut them all off at the stump (except one seedling).
so this is what happened: the stumped trees all thrived. risers (vertical shoots, as opposed to horizontal branches) shot up on the stumps and grew rapidly, outpacing the seedling completely. you only need to keep one riser. i let another one grow later for future stumping and pull off all the other risers.
surprisingly all the new trees have a lot of blossom in their first year of growing (despite my efforts to kill them by using weedkiller on the coffee bed and kids snapping off one of the trunks).
from now on i will stump trees every 5 years to keep them vigorous.
look at the difference.

[tonyt]

stumping pix 2

the next two trees

[tonyt]

stump pix3

the next two trees - note the seedling, planted in nov 2015, is now two years old and is still small.

[tonyt]

stumping pix4

the last tree. this one was snapped off about 6 months ago, but i tied it up and it is doing fine.

[elbeano]

If I remember correctly, about a decade or so ago, Kees from Mt Tamborine Coffee told us all to stump every 2nd tree every 3rd year. Mulch the trees using all by-products from the plant and processing, plus add 1 sack of fresh stable manure.