Look what came up from the far end of the farm this morning. Beautiful green orchids native to Panama. Just lovely.
0 Comments
Yes, peaches are possible in the sub-tropics growing next to the coffee. Initially, I was dreaming of the pink blossom and expectations were low re. the quality of the fruit. The trees are now between 4-5 years old. The peaches keep getting bigger and tastier as the branches get bigger. They taste of the best New Jersey white peach, maybe even better. Such a treat to have some stone fruits here. Beatrice likes to eat them warm from the tree. Eventually, I have plans to do things with them, like making pie.
Today, I learned to prune a coffee bush. We had a couple of downed trees that had fallen on our coffee and by default had taken the coffee mature trees back to almost ground level.
With the rains the bushes started sprouting every which way. Today, I learned, we need to remove all this growth and leave just four main shoots. Otherwise, we are wasting resources on this plant. Every coffee plant should cost about $25 cents a month to keep here......so that works out at about three dollars a year. When you multiply by ten thousand bushes or so.........then you get the logic. You need every bush to be cared for on a regular basis. This is not so different from gardening British style, sort of tending the garden. So, now I am doing it on coffee bushes, pink long gardening gloves, felco pruning shears and wellington boots still relevant. So, I rolled up my sleeves and started stripping off shoots. Enjoying very much this hands on thing. |