5 



COFFEE. 



A. Short Treatise on Coffee Planting, by W.A. Sabonadiere, (continued). 



Roads and Drains. 



"What macadamized roads and railways have done for England and other countries, good bridle 

 roads and paths have effected for coffee estates. In Ceylon on estates that were not too steep, even 

 cart roads were open through the fields for the purposes of manuring and carting the coffee to the main 

 government road, and thence to the railway or shipping port. In Jamaica, especially in the higher Blue 

 Mountain plantations, it would be next to impossible (without immense expense) to make such cart 

 roads, the land is too steep, rocky, and liable to frequent breakaways, but good bridle roads and narrow 

 paths for facilitating the work and enabling the supervision to be better done can easily be opened. 

 The bridle roads should not exceed a gradient of from 10 to 7i feet rise in one hundred feet. About 

 the paths one need not be so particular, as they have often to be taken through very rocky and inacces- 

 sible places ; if they are broad enough to be walked along, and have to be braced up and down to avoid 

 impediments, it does not signify as they open up out-of-the-way portions of the estate and make them 

 easily accessible to the labourers and supervisors of work. There is no doubt the better an estate is 

 roaded, the better it will be supervised, and the better the order in which it will be kept. In the steepest 

 places it is u j>-ood plan to plant the lemon or fever grass along the lower side of the path, as it helps to 

 keep it up. It is also advantageous to plant the same grass in breakaways to prevent the further 

 slipping of the land, and another good plan is to cut some drains at a moderate gradient, say 1 in 10, 

 to 1 in 20 t o catch the water in the worst places, and turn it into the natural ravines. The elaborate 

 plan of drawing coffee estates as carried on in the palmy days of Ceylon would not answer in Jamaica, 

 because the land is mostly too steep and rocky. All planters will have noticed how well coffee usually 

 looks and bears below the roads, because of the fresh mould being constantly thrown upon them each 

 time the road is cleaned after weeding. The advantage of fever grass is that it does not injure the 

 coffee or spread from seed, as does Guinea grass. 



Weeding. 



"Weeding is about the most expensive work on a coffee estate, especially if an old one, where the 

 seed has got full possession of the soil ; iu such cases it is difficult to keep the coffee moderately clean 

 under an expenditure of from 30s. to 40s. per acre, per annum, which means by ordinary Jamaica culti- 

 vation, from 6s. to 8s. per acre for four or five weddings annually. In Ceylon on young estates where 

 the burn had been a good one, the weeding was taken in hand even before the lining and holing were 

 commenced, it could then be done by monthly contracts at from 18s. to 24s. per acre per annum or 

 Is. 6d. to 2s. per acre monthly. On old estates the monthly weeding system was adopted as the only 

 way of keeping decently clean an estate which formerly had been very weedy ; this was effected at a cost 

 of from 3s. to 4s. per acre per mensem, or 36s. to 48s. per acre per annum, and no doubt it paid, in coffee 

 fields that yielded from 5 to 10 cwt. per acre. 



In steep lands the heavy hoe should if possible be altogether done away with, and light hoes or 

 scrapers used, and in fields where the land is very steep, the mould loose, and grass not very bad it 

 should be done by hand. In the young fields of virgin land, I would most certainly have the hoe (large 

 or small) utterly discarded and the hand and a pointed stick alone permitted. In old coffee, the custom 

 is for the weeders in order to s&ve themselves trouble (specially job weeders) to draw the mould away 

 from, in lieu of towards the stem of the tree, this should not be permitted. Uncovering the roots na- 

 turally docs much injury to the trees, and every endeavour should be made to keep them well covered, 

 and as much as possible undisturbed. The mould thus drawn around the roots composed as it is of de- 

 composed weeds and other vegetable matter, acts as a good fertilizer. The process of moderately 

 moulding the roots is as beneficial as laying them bare is injurious to the coffee tree. All weeders are 

 usually expected to pull all suckers and gormandizers from the trees, but it is most difficult to get a 

 man to do his work neatly and properly. Weeders should be made to sweep clean the roads which pass 

 through their jobs. 



Topping. 



Pruning is one of the most necessary as well as the most important and difficult operation that a 

 coffee planter has to see properly carried out. In consequence of the trees being topped, a process which 

 is quite contrary to their natural propensity to soar to a height of 15 to 20 feet, they throw out vertical 

 shoots called suckers or gormandizers, as well as an exuberance of young shoots in all directions, all 

 which have to be taken off and regulated, so as if possible to cause the tree to bear average crops, and 

 prevent its getting into a mass of confused and matted branches. As a beginning when the tree is suffi- 

 ciently high it must be topped In virgin soil where the trees are young and healthy it is better, in my 

 opinion, to leave them alone until they have attained a height of one foot above where it is intended to top 

 them and have borne the maiden crop In this way they can generally be topped in the brown bark, which 

 renders the tree much less likely to be split down from the heavy bearing of the top branches than if cut 

 when the bark is green and sappy. When the proper time arrives, the men should each have a stick 

 with the proper height marked off ; they should cut the two primaries next above this mark about a 

 couple of inches off the stem in a slanting direction outwards, the top should then be taken oft with a 

 clean cut, the cut to face northwards as being less exposed to the sun, forming a cross-like appearance. 

 In exposed places, such as ridges, topping must of necessity be lower because of the direful effects of 

 wind ; and also in ruinate lands, that may have been replanted. Mr. Francis, of Cedar Valley, informs 

 me that he has tried the local practice of topping quite low, say two feet from the ground, afterwards 

 allowing a sucker to grow up the required height. The plan just mentioned, as I can well believe, 



