30 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2018 (October / November)
Photo
courtesy
Mark
Gaskell
Mark Gaskell, farm advisor emeritus
with the University of California's
cooperative extension program,
inspects young coffee trees wrapped in
spun-bound fabric to protect them from
harmful night winds.
"A happy accident"
Ruskey's 42-acre farm is positioned on
slopes only 300 feet above sea level. His
1,500 trees are planted among the avo-
cados and passion fruit. Still, the coffee
trees benefit from climatic conditions that
replicate high-elevation farms in Central
America. The coffee quality is a result of
what Ruskey calls "a happy accident."
"At our [34th] latitude there's long
sunlight in June – 15 hours of sunlight –
resulting in a flowering that turns to green
bean development. That slows down in
the winter as the daylight hours decrease
to the point where most of the develop-
ment almost stalls depending on the tem-
perature," Ruskey explains. "Then when
March and April come around and things
warm up, the crop finishes off. We then
have 15 hours of sunlight and dry condi-
tions in June for harvest."
The original experiment was to determine how much shade is optimal, so some
coffee was planted under the shade of avocado trees with other trees in full sunlight.
Ruskey found that more sun equals more fruit.
Ruskey's farm also benefits from breezes off the Pacific Ocean less than five miles
away and a small likelihood of frost.
"When we originally planted the coffee, we were really concerned about frost. Like
avocados, they can't handle 32 degrees for very long or anything below that," he says.
Avocados are a good indicator crop for the potential success of coffee because both
