When you live in a place where decent coffee is not conveniently accessible, and the semi decent coffee that you can come by has a hefty price, you have to ask yourself if you are willing to give up coffee completely, and if the answer is no, you have too look into alternative ways to source your daily goodness. In my case I decided to source some fresh coffee beans for planting.

At fist I was a bit skeptical,because despite the fact that we live in a place where we can grow a wide variety of fresh produce, I have not encountered anyone growing coffee in this area, until I started searching for someone that does. I soon found out that they used to grow coffee locally in a nearby mountain range, but sadly the farm had closed after the government took the land, and it is currently not functional anymore. It is very sad to know that a farm that was once productive and supplied work to hundreds of local people is now standing in the hands of the government as a wasteland, with the once well groomed and cared for tea and coffee plantations now amounting to an overgrown unharvestable crop . But the positive thing here is that I now knew that coffee can in fact grow in this area.

I finally managed to track down another farmer that grows his own coffee on a small scale and he was more than happy to help me get started, and the great thing is, that he lives just a stone throw away, which is great because this will make it easier should I ever encounter problems or need some advice with my coffee plants or harvesting processes.

The farmer was kind enough to give me a decent amount of fresh coffee beans for planting purposes and also took a walk with me where I picked a few fresh berries off the tree. Surprisingly the coffee berries that housed the beans were quite sweet and not what I expected them to taste like at all. According to the farmer the beans only acquire their bitter coffee taste after the roasting process.

Lets Talk Cultivar

When it comes to coffee there are hundreds of different types - but the two most predominant coffee cultivars are Arabica and Robusta, and the beans that I managed to get was the Robusta beans.

Robusta coffee has a much more bitter taste than its more commonly sold counterpart (Arabica) and the reason for this is that the Robusta coffee bean has a much higher caffeine content(2.7% caffeine content) compared to Arabica(1.5% caffeine content), which gives the Robusta bean a bitterer taste. Also the Robusta carries about only half the sugar content of the Arabica bean and also has much less lipids. But hey I would much rather grow my own top end Robusta coffee beans than suffer through overpriced, no - or low quality store bought Arabica coffee...

Another great factor here is that the extremely high caffeine content of the Robusta plant makes them a hell of a lot easier to farm, as the caffeine serves as a natural insecticide keeping bugs at bay, and we just so happen to be in the right climate as well as altitude for these coffee plants to grow prolifically.

I am really excited about being able to grow my very own tree to cup coffee!
Now all I need is some rain so that I can get planting!