44 PHILIPPINE AGRICULTURAL REVIEW. 



malaganit while the dapdap should be planted one plant to every 

 two coffee trees. All these plants are readily propagated by 

 cutting off limbs or branches 1 to 1.2 meters long and inserting 

 them 20 to 30 centimeters deep in the ground during the rainy 

 season. (This is most conveniently done by the aid of a crow- 

 bar.) In a limited way fruit trees, such as the soursop, cus- 

 tardapple, breadfruit, and jak may also be used as shade, and 

 these should be planted from 6 to 12 meters apart according 

 to size. The necessary shading between these trees while they 

 are small may be provided by planting malaganit, etc. 



Robusta coffee has also been successfully interplanted with 

 coconuts. In this case the palms and coffee should of course be 

 planted at the same time, the palms perhaps not closer than 9 

 to 10 meters apart, the coffee to be used as a "filler" between 

 the coconuts. In this connection it is perhaps well to state that 

 in Java robusta coffee is very frequently planted as a "catch 

 crop" in the Hevea rubber plantations. Among the shade plants 

 available to the Philippine planter, malaganit, dapdap, and 

 "guango," or raintree (Pithecolobinm saman), have given the 

 best results in Java for the robusta with the following ratio 

 yield of coffee: 4.75, 4.10, and 3.06. 



Cultivation. On level and well-cleared land, close attention 

 should be paid to keeping the coffee plantation free from weeds 

 during the first year or two by means of animal-drawn shallow 

 cultivators, supplemented with hand-hoeing. Where the topog- 

 raphy of the land or the presence of stumps renders this im- 

 possible the weeding must of course be done by hand. All weeds 

 should be left in the field where they serve both as a mulch in 

 preserving the moisture and to enrich the soil. As soon as the 

 plants begin to shade the land they thereby aid in the weed erad- 

 ication, and weeding then becomes less expensive. 



Pruning. If the trees are allowed to grow without pruning 

 they become too tall (robusta coffee attains a height of 6 meters 

 or more), and the topmost berries are then difficult to pick. 

 Furthermore unpruned coffee trees (including robusta), have 

 the peculiar habit of bearing their branches near the ground and 

 at the top, leaving the middle bare or nearly so which decreases 

 the producing capacity of the plant. On this account up-to-date 

 planters have generally adopted a system of pruning by which 

 the coffee trees are headed low, giving a maximum yield coupled 

 with easy access to the berries. 



The pruning consists of topping the robusta trees when they 

 are from 2 to 2.5 meters tall and of subsequent pruning to keep 



