My coffee beans are finally starting to ripen.
A few are a lovely red hue.
The little tree is full of beans.
It will be brought inside before freezing temperatures hit.
The beans will be harvested later this month.
I plan on roasting them and grinding them
to make my first cup of tree-to-cup coffee.
What a treat that will be!
Flow
Must I do battle every single day here?
I paused to admire my new little green coffee beans on my coffee tree.
There seemed to be quite a bit of action around the beans.
Ants were busily running back and forth along the branches.
They were tending to their flock of scales. A nasty insect that sucks sap.
There was a busy little food chain with my beans at the bottom.
For the next hour, I sat in the rain with skewers and Q-tips.
Interfering with nature. I killed hundreds of scales. The ants skittered away.
The removal was followed by spritzes of warm Dawn water.
First my buds and now my beans!
My bunnies better not be next!
Oooh Wee Baby!
Warrior Flower
I have a Coffee Tree in my living room. I have petted it for two years now.
It has doubled in size due to careful feeding and watering with “banana water.”
I was excited to see little buds forming at the base of each petiole.
Future blooms for the first time!
My joy quickly turned to consternation when upon closer examination
I discovered scale on several leaves and branches.
Those nasty scale parasites had invaded my precious Coffee Tree.
So out comes the Q-tips and alcohol. For another scale massacre.
The dead bodies were appropriately collected in a coffee cup.
I sang my “Killing Them Softly” song as I murdered the flat sticky foe from leaf and stem.
https://floweralley.org/2017/02/11/killing-them-softly-with-q-tips/
I am happy to report that my Coffee Scales are gone.
I had two other emergencies last week. Stay tuned for these.
FLOW
Have you ever seen coffee beans growing on trees?
I had this experience recently.
My adventure started out as a trip to a new little Colombian restaurant, Orobi Cafe’,
just outside the town of Troutman, NC.
They had large photographs of coffee trees and some small coffee trees in the cafe’.
This lead to an exciting conversation about the family growing their own coffee beans.
I was invited to come to the greenhouse to see the indoor coffee plantation.
Lovely Maria is the grower of the non-genetically-modified Arabica bean trees.
All her plants come from one seventeen- year-old “mama tree.”
I have been invited back to witness the days of flowering in May.
Now, I have another reason to look forward to spring.
Just in case you were wondering, yes, I came home with my own little coffee tree.
FLOWER
floweralley 