COFFEA 



ARABICA 



Drainage 



Temporary 

 Shade. 



Drains. 



Improve the 

 Soil. 



Surface Wash. 



Pits. 



Terracing. 



THE COFFEE PLANT 



be made up with fresh, surface soil. Farm- yard manure may with, advan- 

 tage be also given until a little mound has been formed, on the top of 

 which the seedling should be planted. Transplanting should if possible 

 be made during cloudy days, and just before the commencement of the 

 most copious season of rain. Temporary shade should be afforded to the 

 seedlings, in the form of small pieces of crude bamboo matting, or simply 

 leafy boughs or tufts of bracken fern. It is also a good plan, especially 

 in exposed situations, to fix a stake to which the stem may be lightly 

 tied. If exceptionally dry weather follow transplanting, it may be 

 necessary to give one or two waterings. In some cases a nursery is 

 dispensed with and two or three seeds are deposited on the specially 

 prepared hole-mounds, the healthiest one being ultimately allowed to 

 grow and the others cut out or transplanted. 



Drainage. Weeding or removal of wild herbage from the plan- 

 tation, so as to prevent the young coffee from being choked, now becomes 

 an essential operation. If drains have not been provided at the time 

 the estate was being laid out, by this stage they become imperatively 

 necessary. Nothing is, in fact, more important than a good system of 

 drainage. In the Pests and Blights of the Tea Plant (2nd ed., 45-66) it 

 has been urged on the attention of tea planters that the objects of 

 a system of drainage are to increase the depth and improve the condition 

 of the arable soil. Every word of what has been said in that work on 

 the drainage of tea is applicable to coffee. And I may further add that 

 during my inspection of the coffee estates of South India I found few 

 had been drained anything like to the extent practised with tea. I ac- 

 cordingly urged the coffee planters to reform this defect. 



One of the great advantages of drainage is the admission of air 

 (oxygen) into the soil. The drainage of agricultural lands differs thus 

 essentially from that of the streets of a town. The removal of surplus 

 water is undertaken with a definite object in view, the fulfilment of which 

 determines the position and number of the drains. The water is drawn 

 below the surface, and thus made to carry with it the materials that the 

 combined action of the sun and the air have transformed into a soluble 

 condition. To permit or encourage surface wash is to render the soil 

 sterile, in fact to afford facilities for soil-removal. The deeper the drains 

 the further apart they may be placed, and the deeper the resulting arable 

 soil. But drains of some kind are indispensable for successful coffee 

 planting. In many coffee estates that occupy steep, hilly slopes, a system 

 of trenching or contour catch draining has come into general use, as a pro- 

 tection against severe and wasteful surface wash. The trenches to some 

 extent answer the purpose of refuse pits for the accumulation of manure. 

 In fact in most instances they assume the condition of parallel chains 

 of pits. If used as pits into which the weeds may be thrown, it is cus- 

 tomary to have them cleaned out before the setting in of the rains, so as 

 to afford every means of intercepting the fine soil of the surface wash. 

 The contour drains in the tea estates are usually laid out with a level 

 and the earth removed in their formation thrown on the upper side. This 

 is essential, since the slightest slope downhill would convert them into 

 dangerous surface drains. So again terracing is an additional method 

 practised with great advantage on some estates, though apt, when exposed 

 to the south or south-west, to dry the soil unduly. But as with contour 

 drains so with terraces, they must be laid out as nearly level as possible. 



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