How to Grow your own Coffee

Hi, my name is Byron Martin, here at
Logee's. Today we're going to be talking about coffee. One of my favorite drinks, and a beverage
that's drank by the millions, and perhaps billions of cups every day,
around the world. This is coffee.

This is 'Coffea arabica' which is the-  probably considered the best coffee, in terms of its quality
and flavor. It's a native of Africa, but it's grown
throughout the world in tropical areas where the beans are harvested, and
obviously roasted, for our beverage. You can see the leaves are very shiny;
it's a beautiful tree. It has a lateral branching habit, that kind of comes out
and weeps down.

One thing about coffee is, it's very easy
to grow, in terms of the home conditions. So, for an indoor plant, it really is a great
plant. If you've ever heard of shade-grown coffee, that is where coffee is grown
under the understory of large trees, and it tolerates the lower light. So, that's a
key in terms of our ability to grow this very well in a home situation, where
light levels may not be quite adequate.

It also can be grown in full Sun, too. The
other thing about coffee is, it's quite tolerant to temperatures. We've grown it in
some of our colder houses. It will not take it below freezing; but, it certainly can
take it down to the forties at night on a consistent basis, and the plants will
still be fine, and grow well.

The flowering cycle on it, generally, for us,
is the springtime. And, you can see, here, the plants are just coming into bud. You can see
the young buds forming at the leaf axis. This is also a point where the fruit is
starting to ripen.

These are called "cherries." They're the
yellow beans that are harvested. You can see here's a-- I'll pick one off, here-- There's one
that's ripe and ready to go. There's a green one, that came out of a later flowering cycle; will ripen, probably, during the summertime; it's still
pretty small. So, they can put out several crops a year.

Generally, our coffees here go into one huge flush. This, within the
next, oh, probably couple weeks, will be in full bloom. And, the flowers are white; they're
intensely fragrant. It's a beautiful thing to have in bloom, in the house, when they're
in flower.

And, we can look at these coffee beans, here, which actually have a pulp
around the inside of them. Once you pull the skin off, there's a sweet
pulp that, if you taste it, it actually has a sweetness to it. And then, the inside
there are two-- dropped one, but here are the two beans
that would make our coffee bean. And that certainly looks like the brown, or the
roasted coffee bean.

There's a husk on the outside of that
has to be removed before the coffee bean can be roasted, and then ground for our
drink. So, in growing coffee, in terms of its
culture, you want to have a place that probably gets some direct sunlight.
Although they can grow under lower light, they'll do best if they get direct
sunlight. As a rule of thumb, you always want to bring the soil to
dryness between waterings. They do tolerate some dryness, but severe dryness
can harm them, as it does with many plants.

We grow them in a standard
potting mix, which is our peat lite mixes, and they do pretty well with that.
There is a small amount of problems, at times, with some chlorosis in the winter
time, on the young growth. That's inter-veinal lightening on the young
growth; but generally, that recovers as the warmth comes up in summertime,
and longer days arrive. And you want to fertilize your coffee plant. Not so much in the winter time,
especially if you're in a house under lower light, but in the summertime-- if you put
it outside, or the light level increases in the window that you've got, you want
to start a regular fertilizing program with it.

Generally, we do use a liquid feed, or
granular organic, which is top-dressed or you irrigate with it. And do it
regularly. Too much is obviously not a good thing; but regularly, so the plant is
constantly growing. As far as insects and disease goes, they are susceptible to mealybug.

That's
probably the most prominent thing that we see on them. And they can get scale
insects, if scale insects are in the vicinity where they can make
contact, and move on to the plant. Thank you for watching today. There's a
little bit of information on how to grow coffee.

And for those that are adventurous, you can grow your own coffee beans,
roast them, and make your own cup of joe. Cheers!.