The trees used for shading in Porto Rico are guaba (Inge vera), guatna (Inga laurina), moca (Andira inerinis), and bucare (Erythrina microp teryx). The first two are need most extensively. In Mexico, the shade tree is Inge Inieuil. In Hawaii, coffee shading is practiced, the trees used being, in order of importance, silky oak (Grerillea robusta), kukui, Java plum and Monterey cypress. The native ohia tree, the principal forest tree in Hawaii, is usually left standing at intervals in new land until the planted grevillea is large enough to afford protection. (Fig. 350.) In Hamakua, the Grevillea robusta has been found so much superior to all other trees that it is now the only one recom mended. It is clean and free from blight, and throws off leaves profusely, thus reducing the hoe ing and supplying fertilizing material to the soil. Furthermore, the shade is variegated, and not too dense. The best practice seems to be to provide a row of shade trees every thirty-five or forty feet.
The shade trees are pruned generally by cutting away the lower branches and clearing them of dead wood ; and they are thinned out when neccessary.
In new plantations the ferns are allowed to re main to supply shade for the coffee seedlings, and more especially to lessen the loss from cutworms, which are very destructive to cultivated plants when the field is completely cleared.
Most of the planters hold to the idea that if the coffee trees are topped, shade is a necessity ; if the trees are not topped, no shade is required ; but if the soil is poor or the field wind-swept, shade is beneficial.
coffee trees begin to bear about the third year, giving light crops until the fifth or sixth year. The trees blossom at least three times a year, the fore blossoming, the large blossoming, and the after blossoming. These occur in the months of February, March, April and May, according to location. Generally after seven or eight months the berries are ripe. This throws the harvesting in the last four months of the year. The berries ripen unevenly, so that the plantation must be gone over several times. The picking is done by hand. The yield per tree varies greatly, according to the care given. One pound of dry coffee per tree is a general estimate, although this may be greatly increased.
In Porto Rico the pickers are paid by the meas ure, which is called " almud " and should contain twenty liters. About six or seven cents are paid for a measure. Twenty liters of berries are equal to about five pounds of coffee ready for the market. The expense of picking is $1.20 to $1.40 per 100 pounds of coffee. In Hawaii, the cost of picking and transporting the coffee to the mill averages about three and one-half to four and one-half cents per pound of market coffee.
Handling the product.
When the berries are picked they are subjected to one of two processes. The berries may be dried at once and later put through machines called "hull ers," to extract the seed ; or they may be "pulped; that is, have the outer fleshy coat removed, before drying. In Porto Rico, pulping is usually done at once. The pulping machine is driven by hand, water or other power. Sometimes the separated pulp is used as a fertilizer. The beans are collected in wooden or cement tanks in which they remain to fer ment upwards of thirty hours, in order further to disintegrate the saccharine matter of the external coat, after which they are washed, either mechani cally or by hand, and put on large cement floors in the sun to dry to a point where they can be stored safely. From these floors or from the storeroom they are put in drying drawers. These drawers, for the most part, are constructed underneath the high floors of houses, run on rails in the open, where they are kept as long as there is sunshine (Fig. 351); at the least danger of rain the drawers are run back under shelter. During the whole drying process the grains are repeatedly turned. In some places me chanical hot-air drying apparatus is used. As soon as the coffee is dry, which should be when it is brittle when broken between the teeth, it is either hulled or left in the parchment (the tough inner integument, also called hornskin) and taken in 100 pound bags to the most convenient market. Coffee merchants established there buy the coffee for cash. They hull, polish and separate it into different grades by special and mostly modern machinery, and finally pick it over by hand.
Hawaiian coffee is all fermented and washed. It is thought by many that the method of fermenting has a strong influence on the flavor of the coffee. The Hawaiian berry is first run through a pulping machine, immediately after being picked. When hulled, the bean in the parchment is fermented in shallow trays or bins eight to twelve inches in depth. When the beans have fermented and there is no longer a marked rising temperature, they are washed in a stream of running water to remove the gum and then transferred to drying-houses, or the product is taken to the beach and dried in the sun. This product, known as parchment, is then packed and sent to the coffee milling establish ments and is run through machinery which removes the parchment. The beans are then graded and polished and in many establishments hand-picked. When put up in bags of 100 to 150 pounds, the coffee is ready for market.