East Africa: Grow and Earn From Coffee Faster

Posted on :Tuesday , 10th January 2017

It is no longer really true that growing Robusta coffee is a prerogative for the patient farmers that can afford to wait several years after planting before they can harvest the crop and begin earning money, according to Matia Ssengooba the proprietor of Ssemanja Coffee Nursery in Rakai District.

He says that if intending coffee farmers take time to find the right plantlets, it takes them much shorter to start harvesting the crop and getting money.

"I have heard a lot of young men saying that the coffee trees take three years and even longer to produce their first berries after planting and that they prefer to go for crops like tomatoes, beans and maize which can be harvested and sold only after three or four months," he told Seeds of Gold.

"The elderly also tend to avoid growing a crop that they know will take years before they can benefit from it."

Highly paying

If prospective coffee farmers plant the right size of plantlets, they will be able to harvest coffee between one year and two years if they carry out good agronomic practices.

"Growing cloned Robusta coffee is a highly paying investment and it is now the crop for the young and elderly to resort to if they want good money quickly," Ssengooba said.

"I have a strong reason for recommending cloned Robusta coffee. Besides growing pretty fast it is high yielding and it has a large bean size.

It is therefore highly recommended for people with small plots of land and eager to get a regular source of income since coffee is harvested twice every year."

According to him, a cloned coffee plantlet should have spent about a year in the nursery bed and should be at least a foot tall before its transfer to the garden.

"The farmer should also ensure that the nursery bed from which he or she intends to get the plantlets from is well recommended by the area agricultural services extension officer.

Follow guidelines

Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) has approved of some coffee nursery beds and it is from such nurseries that the farmer should go for the best planting material."

It is also important that the farmer follows the correct planting guidelines by digging holes two feet deep and two feet wide and filling them up with black surface soil preferably mixed with organic manure. The holes should be some ten feet from one another.

It would be better to plant the plantlets at the beginning of the rain season since initially they need good soil moisture to grow with vigour.

At the time of planting, the farmer must remove the polythene container of the block of soil in which the roots of the coffee plantlet are located.

Space big enough to be filled with the block of soil should be made in the prepared hole that was filled with black surface soil mixed with organic manure and it is into that space that the plantlet is placed.

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