Can you grow coffee at home?

Quick Answer: Yes, you can grow coffee at home, but it’s a matter of readjusting your expectations: You’re growing a gorgeous houseplant that will once in a while produce the “novelty harvest,” not a substitute for the grocery store.

Although as indoor plants, Coffea arabica(t)-like an in-trouser Peace Lily or rubber tree permissible- is robust, the “farm-to-cup” yield will never be inspiring for most people. With a mature, healthy indoor plant (3–5 years old), you may get enough cherries for one or two cups of coffee per year. The true utility is in the experience of growing a garden like this, and the rich, glossy good looks.

The following is a seed by seed breakdown for specific grower profiles, those gross little details that popular gardening blogs tend to sideline.

For The Coffee Geeks: “Seed to Cup” Reality Check

If you are hunting the holy grail of sipping coffee you have roasted yourself, you’re up against a biological challenge more than just gardening. The counter-intuitive truth is that the easy part is growing the tree; it’s in processing the bean where home projects flounder.

The Flavor Gap:

The taste of most coffee grown at home is usually “grassy,”, or vegetal. It’s not you; it’s the climate. Excellent Arabica needs high altitude stress: that is hot days and very cool/cold nights (diurnal temperature variation). That temperature shift slows bean maturation, giving complex sugars and acids a chance to develop. The unchanging 70°F (21°C) of a living room thrashes the bean to maturity, and the flavour profile goes flat.

The Hand-Pollination Protocol:

Coffee is self-fertile, but inside there is no wind or insects to shake the flowers.

• Timing: Flowers bloom 2 to 3 days only. The jasmine-like scent is your cue.
• Method: Don’t just shake the branch. Use a tiny artist’s paintbrush or a Q-tip.
• Action: Twirl the brush inside one flower to gather pollen, then go to the next. You have to take pollen from an anther and put it onto a stigma. If you do not provide this artificial assistance, your percent fruit set will fall below 20.

Processing Micro-Batches:

There is no way to sort beans one by one as they ripen.

The Freeze Method: Select only the deep red cherries (about 20 Brix sugar, if you have a refractometer). Wash them, dry and freeze in a zip-lock bag until you have gathered enough (ca. 200g of cherries) to roast one single micro-batch.

For The Houseplant Junkies: Looks and Staying Power

For you, the objective is a verdant, architectural plant. Most labels will include the common instruction of “bright, indirect light,” but this is easily misunderstood.

The “Understory” Myth:

In nature, coffee grows beneath the dappled shade of taller trees. But “shade” in the tropics is still a whole lot more intense than an area with some sun exposure on a Seattle living room coffee table.

• Lighting Logic: The UV and intensity of light is filtered out by the window glass. A coffee plant three feet from a window is essentially in the dark.
• Placement: Set plant directly in an East/West facing window. Rarely sunscorch And if the leaves turn brown/crispy on the edges it’s almost never sunscorch but rather low humidity or water quality.

The Water Chemistry Variable:

Coffee is an acid loving plant that is sensitive to salts.

• The Brown Tip Problem: Leaf tips turn brown (necrosis) because of fluoride or chlorine in municipal tap water or salt build-up, from synthetic fertilizers.
• The Fix: Use distilled or rainwater. If you can’t come up with rainwater, allow tap water to sit for 24 hours before using it, so that chlorine off-gasses (though this does not eliminate chloramine or fluoride).

Pest Management:

Scale and mealybug can be a problem on coffee plants.

• Examination: Look under leaves and at the junction where leaf meets stem.
• Treatment: Refrain from strong chemicals. Neem oil on the leaves or just wash them with a damp piece of cloth. Coffee leaves are hard and withstand mechanical cleaning.

For The Do-it-yourself Gardeners: High Tech Horticulture

And if you do try this as a hydroponic or precision soil project, you will need to work hard to manage the root system and soil pH.

The Taproot Constraint:

Coffee trees send a single taproot downward rather than having thick fibrous roots common in most houseplants.

Potting Geometry: No shallow, flat pots. You want pots with a depth, and you want them to be cylinder-style (such as rose pots). If the taproot soaks to the bottom, then starts circling (root bind), your tree will stop growing up and start dropping leaves.

Soil Engineering:

Commercial potting mix is frequently too neutral (a pH of 7.0). nutrient uptake for C. arabica is markedly reduced if the medium pH exceeds 6.5.

• The Mix: Make a soil mix that’s 40 percent peat moss (for acidity), 30 percent perlite (for drainage) and 30 percent high quality compost.
• pH Target: You want your soil to be around 6.0 up to 6.3-ish.
• Iron Lockout: This is when the new leaves are yellow with green veins (interveinal chlorosis), it’s not that the plant is lacking iron; but, due to an alkaline soil, the plant can’t uptake the iron. Acidify the mix with sulfur or an acid-loving plant fertilizer, rather than adding more iron.

For Shoppers: Safety and Longevity

It is indeed very unique to buy a coffee plant as a present, but you also need to think about the environment which the person receiving it has at home.

The Toxicity Reality:

Though not poisonous, this plant falls into somewhat of a gray area when it comes to animals.

• The Science: Saponins and caffeine are found in the foliage and stems. Caffeine is what makes the bean that changes everything for humans but in nature served as a natural pesticide to fend off bugs and other pests.
• Pet Safety: The plant is considered toxic to cats and dogs when ingested in significant quantities, as reported by veterinary sources. It’ll make you throw up and give you arrythmia. Not as fast-acting-poisonous as Sago Palm or Lilies, but it is not “pet safe.’

The “Droop” Communicator:

This one is a good starter plant because it speaks to you.

• The Signal: When the coffee plant is thirsty, its leaves dramatically droop. This is a bit mess, but it’s “stay out of my face” mechanism to minimize surface area and such transpiration.
• Recovery: While a fern killed is dead when dry, the coffee plant will spring right back to full rigidity within hours of getting water. That makes it a forgiving gift for someone who may forget about watering plants every now and then.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much coffee will I get from an indoor plant?

You should also temper your expectations— 3-5 years later when the tree matures, a healthy cherry yielding season of one to two cups per year is in no way guaranteed. The plant is something like a decorative houseplant, with a “novelty harvest,” rather than a store-bought-context substitute for beans.

Why does my home-roasted coffee have a “grassy” or vegetal flavor?

It tastes flat because there isn’t a huge diurnal temp variation in indoor settings (hot days, very cool nights). ” Room temperature (70°F), constantly rushes the bean to maturity, and complex sugars and acids that high altitude stress produce don’t develop.

How do I get my indoor coffee plant to bear fruit?

Because, there are no bugs, or wind blowing about indoors and you’ll need to manually pollinate these flowers while they’re open for a mere 2-3 days. Swirl inside flowers with a paintbrush or Q- tip and transfer pollen from the anther to the stigma; otherwise, fruit set may be less than 20%.

What causes the leaves of my coffee plant to turn brown on the tips?

Brown nibs (necrosis) are usually from water chemistry, not the sun. Salts, fluoride and chlorine in tap water I’ve heard coffee plants are sensitive to salts, as well as fluoride and chlorine which is sometimes present in municipal water. To correct this, you will want to start using distilled water or rainwater.

Is the coffee plant safe for pet-owning households?

No, the plant is toxic to cats and dogs. Despite the fruit being edible to humans, the leaves and stems have caffeine and saponins which can cause vomiting and heart arrhythmias in dogs if they are consumed in large enough quantities.

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