PlantFiles: Coffee
Coffea arabica

When I saw a 3" pot with three plants at a local
hardware store, I didn't think the poor thing could
survive a trip to the checkout, much less life
after tomorrow. It was, after all, on sale for but a
quarter.

I brought it home, pulled off the dead leaves,
watered it and went to bed. This morning it appears
an entirely new plant, there is hope! I repotted the
poor things, gave them a proper home, nice little label
and will now hope to grow a gorgeous house plant.

Wish me luck!

Karen Marie

We have a small plant here in Houston, Texas. I have found that the plant will not tolerate the summer heat here, even in the shade. The heat seemed to be causing the leaves to turn brown and fall off. So we have moved the plant intoors and placed it in front of a bay window where it gets morning sun. The plant is doing much better.

One of my favorites! It is constantly the most cheerful green. We bring it in for the winter, and it lets me know the moment it needs water, and is terribly forgiving. After four years it is about five feet tall, time to cut it off and have two! Good thing I do not depend on it for coffee beans, as I have never seen one, let alone a flower. Must be doing something wrong.

I purchased three Coffea arabica plants at Lowe's, offered in the "Angel Plants" brand of indoor plants in 3" pots. I transplanted them into 5 gallon pots with potting soil and lots of humus and placed them in full sun and watered about once a day. They have grown to about 14" in one season. I overwintered them (Zone 8b/9a borderline) in my greenhouse and they have remained green and healthy. If anyone can offer advice on when the plants reach maturity and begin to flower or how to induce flowering in potted Coffea plants, it will be greatly appreciated. I was treated to an Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony at a local restaurant and look forward to possibly roasting my own coffee beans for a similar ceremony when friends come to dinner.

This plant was given to me in a dish garden. It has thrived in filtered light with very little water. The foliage is very pretty in contrast to the other plants in the container. It is deserving of much more respect and I plan to move it to another container and give it more TLC and see how it does as a houseplant.

We have just a handful of coffee trees in our yard and they have not started producing as yet...but in Kona on the other side of our island, there are literally hundreds of small coffee farms. Kona coffee is expensive, especially when selecting the peaberry, but well worth the price. Smooth with no bitter aftertaste, a great choice for a wonderful morning brew!

On our side of the island, several small farms have started sprouting up, especially at a higher elevation. This is known as Hamakua coffee, named after the area of the island.

My grandmum planted 15 Coffea arabicas when she moved to this house in 1965. We lost three of the bushes somewhere along the line; the remaining 12 continue to flower twice each year, and together yield 3-4 kilogrammes of berries annually. The flowers - white, jasmine-like, lightly fragrant, borne along the branches in dense clusters - appear immediately following the first rains. Watching the bees pollinating away, early mornings, is a great sight. And there's something else to a cup of coffee with a personal history!

Here in Brazil the limitation to the coffee culture is the soil. Coffee plants are planted in tropical and subtropical places, but only in a certain kind of soil, which has very small grains, red/purple color, very rich and acidic. The rainfall in those areas isn´t particularly intense, but this soil stays moist for a long time, without being muddy.

Coffee is a very valuable article in international commerce, which gave coffee farmers in Brazil so much power that they drove the brazilian politics for 100 years, until 1929, when the prices dropped suddenly, ruining many farmers. Still, Brazil is still the biggest coffee producer of the world.

I live in zone 6 (approx), and I have been growing it indoors on an open-air plant shelf at about 60 to 70 degrees beneath a 20 watt flourescent bulb in pretty low-humidity. This plant has proven very easy to take care of in these conditions. Though, I have found that mine seems to require a particularly heavy amount of water...much more than I expected. I water it thoroughly each day until the soil is quite moist. This keeps the leaves and branches healthy and strong. If I miss watering for even two days, the leaves begin to sag and the scene looks quite sad :-( I put this plant in a heated (85 degrees) growing cabinet with reflective inner walls channeling 40 watts of flourescent light to leaves and it flourished. This was more of an experiment (as it has since been set back under the 20W bulb), but it seemed to enjoy the high temperature and VERY bright light.

I have mine as a houseplant. I live in zone 5 and bought it at Meijers for a houseplant. It is doing very well in a filtered light spot in my house.

The most widely grown species for producing coffee. A small understory tree in the wild, it is often cultivated as a shrub, pruned to a height of 6' for easier harvesting.

The leaves of the tree vary in color depending on their maturity - upon budding they are yellow, changing to clear green then finally maturing to a dark glossy green. The trees will flower and produce edible fruit when 3-4 years old.

The white flowers bloom in clusters of 8 to 15 flowers each and emit a light, Jasmine-like fragrance. The flower lasts only long enough to be pollinated, and culminates in production of two edible berries (called cherries) approximately 7 months after flowering.