Modern coffee plantations may range from the small, peasant-owned farms of Colombia to immense, private Brazilian fazendas with more than a million trees to cooperatives such as those of the Chagga tribe on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. But no matter how they are administrated or where they are, it is still the basic life-cycle of the coffee tree that dictates much of the real activity on the plantation.
Begin From The Coffee Seeds
It all begins with the coffee seeds, chosen from the heartiest, best-flavored, biggest yielding and most disease-resistant trees. Stripped of their cherry-like skins and pulps, but not their parchment wrappings, the seeds are planted in special nursery beds, where they are carefully watered, shaded, and watched. After a few months, when they are several inches high, they are transferred to individual pots or bags, in which they live until their first birthday. By this time, they are about one and a half to two feet tall. Now the coffee trees graduate and become real citizens of the plantation. They are planted out in rows about ten feet apart. Between each row are planted fast-growing shade trees to shelter the young coffee plants, filtering sunlight and maintaining humidity.
Coffee Trees To Grow To Maturity
It takes three to five more years for the coffee trees to grow to maturity. Although they are capable of reaching heights upwards of twenty feet, they are kept pruned to about six feet, to preserve their energy and to aid in harvesting. Meanwhile, care must continue. The same rich soil and steady rains that nurture the coffee trees do not discriminate where weeds are concerned. The farmer must continually till the soil, pulling up intruders. And careful eyes must watch for signs of some of the dreadful diseases that prey on the coffee tree, among them wood borers, scale insects that may engulf parts of the tree, and a leaf disease classified as Hemileia vastatrix, which, on its first “public appearance”
Green Berries Ripen To Rich Cherry Red
in 1869, wiped out the entire coffee industry of Ceylon. There are pesticides that combat all these afflictions with the exception of Hemileia, and a good deal of money is being spent on finding a cure for that. Much of the farmer’s own time and money is spent fighting coffee pests. If all goes well, the trees finally begin to produce their jasmine-scented blossoms, and the coffee fields are awash with white. Each flower lasts only a few days, but others appear elsewhere on the same tree and even on the same branch. Within two months clusters of green berries appear where the blossoms were, and in another six months or so they ripen to the rich cherry-red.
Because an even climate ensures that the coffee tree will always bear blossoms and green berries and red berries at the same time, it is impractical to have mechanized harvesting equipment. To pick coffee that has reached perfection, the judgment of the human eye is essential, and each tree must be gone over many times to ensure that each bean is picked at its peak.
Maximum Life Expectancy Of A Coffee Tree
In one year an excellent coffee tree can yield as much as twelve pounds of coffee cherries (four to five in beans). A plantation tree has a maximum life expectancy of about forty years, although some have lived a century, but it will reach its best condition at around age ten or fifteen.