Congrats, that is pretty exciting.
What you do next is to let them ripen, wash-process them, sort them by hand in AA quality and then drop them off to me near Noosa. I will look after them from there.
I'll even pour you an espresso while you are here! (I'm good like that.)
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Growing coffee
Collapse
X
-
My trees in Gympie are ripening now. in 2006 I was given 4 seedling by a Coffee Farmer near Maleny in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Guatemalan Reds he called them. Grew them at Caloundra and dug them up when we made the tree change to the Southside of Gympie in 2008 and planted them here, they have produced cherry each year but, not knowing what to do with them I never bothered picking any. Good crop atm so. What do I do next??Last edited by MiCarts; 11 August 2022, 03:18 PM.
- Flag
- Likes 2
-
Anyone else in the Brissy area find their coffee cherries have started ripening a month or so earlier this year? Possibly due to all the rains?
GrahamK
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
Not having to pulp the last 2 or 3 kg of ripe cherries as my black upside down hanging noisy friends do some every night and drop the seeds on the ground for me to pick up.
The dry conditions have meant that they are hungry and have lots of surrounding bush to live in and are also eating native plant flowers and my mango flowers ( till I covered them).
They have never worried the coffee harvest before.
I soak , wash and rack dry them just like fermented beans.
On reading up about Lissa virus ,it is not dangerous unless the bats injure your skin.
Cheers Herbie.
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
i'll keep that in mind elbeano.Originally posted by elbeano View PostIf 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.
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
Pests in ripening/ripe coffee beans
The maggots and brown ooze are from Qld fruit fly. A scientist from CSIRO has definitively identified them in the berries in my 50 coffee plants. I live in Batemans Bay, halfway between Nowra and Bega on the south coast of NSW. Control is very difficult, as the flies sting the ripening fruit, which then ripen before the seeds are mature - hence floaters.Originally posted by Elvis3577 View PostHi.
Sorry for taking so long to reply...
We went to Europe for a few weeks chasing the snow so....
Anyway. To answer your question . I have never pruned them yet.The trees weren't all that old and bushy. But as i came back I noticed that they are certainly getting that way !
So maybe yes....time to get the secateurs out !
About 2 days ago now, I rang John Zentveld. Snr btw. And we had quite a lenghty chat. Mostly about coffee as well. And I tried as best as I could , to explain my problem. Which is not easy over the phone....
Anyway, he recons it's something called " Cercospora " ,which didn't ring any bells, and is basically caused by malnutrition. And so, he recommended an organic slow release( pellet) fertilizer.If I heard it right I think he mentioned a brand " Terrafirma ". He also added that it's not a quick fix and that the next crop also may suffer. But it should come good after that... The idea is basically that a plant which is a bit down and not all that healthy is more susceptible to diseases, incl fruitflies etc.
I had a quick look on the internet to see what this Cercospora would look like, and it doesn't resemble the looks of my leaves. Personally I think my plants don't look all that / at all sick, apart from some brown leaf tips and slight yellowing. But I agree that some fertilizer/ food would go a long way and won't hurt !
His response was quite casual when I mentioned pruning. He seems to think that it is not going to make too much of a difference in my case....
PS. By the sounds of it 'Zentveld Coffee' sells hand-pulpers and hullers in case anyone is interested.The hullers are A$330,- . I can't remember the pulper price.
Happy growing everyone !
EAP.
Climate change is here to stay. The flies need a dusk temperature of ~15 degrees for mating. Google it, and you too will be unhappy!
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
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.
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
-
-
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.
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
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?Originally posted by ubique17 View PostHi 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.
- Flag
Leave a comment:
-
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.
- Flag
- Likes 1
Leave a comment:

Leave a comment: