Our Blog
Part III: Caring for Your Coffee Tree
View BY :
The Beauty of Growing Coffee Trees in Your Home
Coffee trees are remarkable for their ability to regenerate after severe pruning.
Severe pruning is hard on the psyche. You have taken care of your tree for 15 years and it has produced an amazing amount of enjoyment as it took you through its seasonal life cycles for 12 of those years. You are no Paul Bunyan with an anxious ax. You want to save trees, not chop them down. So you are about to break your own heart and you know it. You are, however, about to rejuvenate your tree and it will love you for your bravery. Sharp pruning shears are all that you need (and faith).
“The Cut” – May 4, 2016
On May 4th, 2016 the “cut” was made about 18” from the base of the tree; it broke my heart. That’s because I harvested 511 cherries from the tree, de-pulped them, soaked the seeds in a water-bath, dried them for a week on a window sill, and in the end had about 12 ounces of green beans. We invited the mayor of Fort Bragg, chefs, a winery owner, and our staff to a once in a lifetime “cupping.” We put the roasted beans on the cupping table with coffees from Central America and were pleasantly surprised when they received the highest praise for flavors we described as bright with hints of lemon, peanut butter, and dark chocolate.
27 Days Later – June 1, 2016
Note the small fresh leaves close to the trunk. This tree has plenty of root spore and therefore it is overpowered. It has stored its regenerative powers and now those roots have much less plant structure to support. It will put on a vigorous growth spurt over the next 6 months. Notice a new trunk beginning about 8” up the main trunk. We will watch it and hopefully 2 or 3 others will emerge from the lower trunk, proving the structure for the new tree.
48 Days After “The Cut” – June 21, 2016
The tree is beginning to fill in its remaining architecture with bright new leaves and a second trunk has emerged at about 10” from the base. We are on our way. There is nowhere to go but up and out.
Stay tuned for photos of its progress over the next 6 months.
Read The Full Series
Part I: The Beauty of Growing Coffee Trees in Your Home
Part II: All you Need to Know About Growing Coffee Trees At Home
Part III: Caring For Your Coffee Tree
Recommended Reading
Back to the Blog-
Harvesting the fruits of our own coffee tree
It all started with some seeds that Paul smuggled back to the states from Los Piños Farm in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. You might know this farm if you’ve tried these two coffees: Byron’s Natural and Byron’s Maracaturra light roasts. It may look as though it took minimal effort for this tree to thrive indoors, but it’s quite the contrary. Paul planted the seeds, taking about two months for them to sprout. It grew to about two feet when it started suffering and needed more TLC. The amount of light it was getting downstairs was not sufficient, although the temperature was sublime, but coffee trees need exactly the right balance of light, water, temperature, and soil. Using the process of elimination, Paul discovered it couldn’t be any of those, except maybe light so he brought the tree up to the office of Greg Barrett, our director of operations where it saw new light and slowly came back to life in his care.
It generally takes about 4-5 years for a coffee tree to bear fruit, which is then harvested once a year in standard conditions. This leads to a huge issue for coffee farmers when demand rises for coffee, and they want more crops, they can’t exactly grow more on the spot. An analogy Paul used to explain this is “if you’re a carrot farmer, you just plant more carrots, but if you’re a coffee farmer, you plant and you have to wait four years.”
Today, we’re harvesting a four-year-old coffee tree right here in our TCC office. We are making sure to pull the cherries but not completely pull the nodes off. The reason for this is that next year’s cherries will grow back from the same node where it was pulled before. The coffee you buy from us is picked by hand by each farmer we partner with, and de-pulping is done by machine. All of the pulp discarded from coffee cherries can be used to make flour, wine, jam, and pie and it can even be eaten raw. Once the coffee beans are de-pulped, we’re letting them dry for a couple of days before we roast them. We’re doing this all by hand in-office to show you the process and that it can be done at home!
Stay tuned to hear about the roasting process.
Harvested coffee cherries.
Depulping the cherries.
Find out more about growing coffee trees at home:
All You Need To Know About Growing Coffee Trees in Your Home.
Growing Coffee at HomeOffice Coffee Tree Harvest
read more
Harvesting the fruits of our own coffee tree
It all started with some seeds that Paul smuggled back to the states from Los Piños Farm in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. You might know this farm if you’ve tried these two coffees: Byron’s Natural and Byron’s Maracaturra light roasts. It may look as though it took minimal effort for this tree to thrive indoors, but it’s quite the contrary. Paul planted the seeds, taking about two months for them to sprout. It grew to about two feet when it started suffering and needed more TLC. The amount of light it was getting downstairs was not sufficient, although the temperature was sublime, but coffee trees need exactly the right balance of light, water, temperature, and soil. Using the process of elimination, Paul discovered it couldn’t be any of those, except maybe light so he brought the tree up to the office of Greg Barrett, our director of operations where it saw new light and slowly came back to life in his care.
It generally takes about 4-5 years for a coffee tree to bear fruit, which is then harvested once a year in standard conditions. This leads to a huge issue for coffee farmers when demand rises for coffee, and they want more crops, they can’t exactly grow more on the spot. An analogy Paul used to explain this is “if you’re a carrot farmer, you just plant more carrots, but if you’re a coffee farmer, you plant and you have to wait four years.”
Today, we’re harvesting a four-year-old coffee tree right here in our TCC office. We are making sure to pull the cherries but not completely pull the nodes off. The reason for this is that next year’s cherries will grow back from the same node where it was pulled before. The coffee you buy from us is picked by hand by each farmer we partner with, and de-pulping is done by machine. All of the pulp discarded from coffee cherries can be used to make flour, wine, jam, and pie and it can even be eaten raw. Once the coffee beans are de-pulped, we’re letting them dry for a couple of days before we roast them. We’re doing this all by hand in-office to show you the process and that it can be done at home!
Stay tuned to hear about the roasting process.
Harvested coffee cherries.
Depulping the cherries.
Find out more about growing coffee trees at home:
All You Need To Know About Growing Coffee Trees in Your Home.
Office Coffee Tree Harvest
read moreHarvesting the fruits of our own coffee tree
It all started with some seeds that Paul smuggled back to the states from Los Piños Farm in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. You might know this farm if you’ve tried these two coffees: Byron’s Natural and Byron’s Maracaturra light roasts. It may look as though it took minimal effort for this tree to thrive indoors, but it’s quite the contrary. Paul planted the seeds, taking about two months for them to sprout. It grew to about two feet when it started suffering and needed more TLC. The amount of light it was getting downstairs was not sufficient, although the temperature was sublime, but coffee trees need exactly the right balance of light, water, temperature, and soil. Using the process of elimination, Paul discovered it couldn’t be any of those, except maybe light so he brought the tree up to the office of Greg Barrett, our director of operations where it saw new light and slowly came back to life in his care.
It generally takes about 4-5 years for a coffee tree to bear fruit, which is then harvested once a year in standard conditions. This leads to a huge issue for coffee farmers when demand rises for coffee, and they want more crops, they can’t exactly grow more on the spot. An analogy Paul used to explain this is “if you’re a carrot farmer, you just plant more carrots, but if you’re a coffee farmer, you plant and you have to wait four years.”
Today, we’re harvesting a four-year-old coffee tree right here in our TCC office. We are making sure to pull the cherries but not completely pull the nodes off. The reason for this is that next year’s cherries will grow back from the same node where it was pulled before. The coffee you buy from us is picked by hand by each farmer we partner with, and de-pulping is done by machine. All of the pulp discarded from coffee cherries can be used to make flour, wine, jam, and pie and it can even be eaten raw. Once the coffee beans are de-pulped, we’re letting them dry for a couple of days before we roast them. We’re doing this all by hand in-office to show you the process and that it can be done at home!
Stay tuned to hear about the roasting process.
Harvested coffee cherries.
Depulping the cherries.
Find out more about growing coffee trees at home:
All You Need To Know About Growing Coffee Trees in Your Home.