Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Drugs, development and reality

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  • Matt Graylee, in reply to BenWilson,

    Sweet as Ben!

    Coffee regions, Sydney, &… • Since Mar 2014 • 6 posts Report Reply

  • Matt Graylee, in reply to Stephen Judd,

    That's a good point Stephen, mechanical harvesting does mean there must be a percentage of under and over ripe cherries collected at the same time. So to help solve this issue the first thing people try to achieve is a simultaneous ripening across entire plots, using a genius system of irrigation control: irrigating consistently throughout budding, stressing the tree by not irrigating just before flowering for about three weeks so all the buds catch up... and then just when the trees are crawling across the dessert floor thinking they see a mirage... Boom you drop a load of water and everything blooms at once.

    The second control is a huge amount of sorting and milling and sorting again by size, density and colour that happens at different stages after picking by machine. It works surprisingly well, but again only for countries with a large amount of capital, expensive labour, and flat land.

    I'm a sucker for slow hand picking on goaty slopes myself - the trick is having people like Ben Wilson up there knowing the time spent multi-pass picking his 16 trees and then choosing to pay more for the resulting awesomesauce accordingly haha.

    Have fun,
    :)

    Coffee regions, Sydney, &… • Since Mar 2014 • 6 posts Report Reply

  • ChrisW, in reply to Matt Graylee,

    then about 16 trees is you for the year.
    .... anyway, that is 81 square meters dedicated to you annually. (4x4 grid under shade with 3m between each tree)
    ;)

    I reckon Ben will need to double that 81 sq. metres to supply his coffee habit.

    The trees on the edges and corners of the 9x9 m square plot that you're envisaging are shared with the neighbouring squares supplying other coffee drinkers, so it doesn't support 16 whole trees. Easier to calculate if you think of each tree in the plantation as being at the centre of its 3x3 metre square, so 9 sq. metres per tree, 16 trees, 144 sq. metres. But say 160 sq. m allowing for a bit of edge effect and on-site infrastructure like tracks, sheds.
    ;-)

    Gisborne • Since Apr 2009 • 851 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    How about green tea

    A lot less. Tea uses much more of the plant than coffee. And tea plants grow close together I think. Might only be a couple of square metres to feed your tea habit.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Matt Graylee, in reply to ChrisW,

    You're definitely correct. Unless we imagine his plot in some sort weird vacuum, with magic sides and amazing yield in the corners.

    Coffee regions, Sydney, &… • Since Mar 2014 • 6 posts Report Reply

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