Does anybody know how to raise coffee.Our any sites that might be helpful.Any help would be great.

-- Richard Orman (rlorman@thenett.com), February 07, 2002

Answers

The wife has several coffee plants of varing ages. It takes five years for the plant to get old enough to start having coffee beans. They must not have to have a male and a female because the beans have sprouted and are doing fine. The plants are not frost resistant and have to be brought in during the winter. Any freezeing and they are history. They seem to have two crops of beans a year. She has them in large clay pots about five gallon in size the largest are about six feet tall. Not really a crop to make money with but fun. If you want any more infromation please advise. David

-- David in North Al (bluewaterfarm@mindspring.com), February 07, 2002.

Long ago, and far away, I decided to build a greenhouse, and grow coffee beans, because the price had just abruptly risen from less than a buck per pound to over ten dollars per pound.

A little research cooled my fire, however; I learned that, once the trees are mature, you can expect about a poung of coffee per tree per year. Since we were going through about a pound per week, we'd have needed fifty trees under glass.

-- joj (jump@off.c), February 07, 2002.

By the way, we can pretty near pay for our airfare to Costa Rica by buying our coffee in a supermercado near the airport: organically grown, yummy coffee, for about fifty cents per pound when we lugged forty kilos home last year.

-- joj (jump@off.c), February 07, 2002.

Try a U.S. county extensision office in hawaii or South Florida.Coffee cannot be sold with out certain federal permits, like alcohol and fire arms it's sale is federaly controled.

-- SM Seve (notrealmail@msn.com), February 07, 2002.

Coffee is an "understorey" crop. Our coffee bushes are under ours & our neighbor's trees, plus the senior citizen "natural" area near where I work has a lot of coffee under the bigger trees. We get a handful of berries off a 5-6 foot tree. We have very acid soil and mulch well. We freeze the seeds till we get enough to toast, grind and brew-quite a production for 2 cups of coffee!

-- Mitzi Giles (Egiles2@prodigy.net), February 10, 2002.