We are grateful to the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture, Regional Field Office of the Cordillera Administrative Region (DA-RFO CAR) through the Regional High Value Crop Development Program (HVCDP) Coordinator Joan Dimas-Bacbac for the coffee seedlings they provided for us since we started in 2018.
The first question that hit my mind in January 2018 was how do I plant coffee? My husband and I met up with Professor Val Macanes on March . Macanes gave useful tips such as that the “Base of fertilization is very important. At least 5 kilos of chicken manure per hole (1,200 per hectare). Digging should be half a meter by half a meter.” He even gave us a production guidebook, but I wanted more context on the steps.
What helped me is this “Production Guide for Arabica Coffee” from Bote Central. You can download it here. I liked that it had a lot of illustrations, which gave me a head start. The guide also helped me teach the coffee farmers by showing the illustrations. It would be on July 2018 when I would get a formal training from the Benguet State University (BSU). The training workshop was called “Pre-production management, Quality Enhancement of Coffee Product from Seed to Cup.”
Production-Guide-for-Arabica-Coffee-by-Bote-Central-Inc-Maker-of-Coffee-Alamid-1Let me show you what we did. On the slopes of the family ancestral land , lies a dense, oak-dominated cloud forest (or kalasan) together with the Benguet Pine trees.
Clearing. the land
We had to clear the land first so we could plant in between the trees.
