Propagation.—The place selected for seedbed and nursery should be well drained, with a loamy soil, the richer in humus the better. A light bamboo frame should be erected above the nursery plot about 2.5 meters high, and covered with grass or split bamboo to provide about half shade. The land should be spaded thoroughly to a depth of 30 centimeters, and all stones, roots, etc., removed. One meter is a convenient width for seed and plant beds.
The seeds should be sown broadcast, not too thick, covered with not more than 1 centimeter of earth, and then watered thoroughly. Hereafter the seedbed should be well watered from time to time whenever the soil appears dry. Frequent light sprinklings that do not allow the water to penetrate more than a few millimeters below the surface are harmful rather than beneficial both in the seedbed and the nursery, in that they encourage a shallow root formation.
As soon as the first leaves are fully expanded the seedlings should be transplanted to the nursery beds, which should be prepared like the seedbed. If the land is poor it is well to spade in a liberal quantity of well-decayed manure or compost. The plants should be taken up carefully, the taproot nipped off with the thumb nail, and then transplanted with the aid of a pointed stick or small dibber spacing them 10 to 15 centimeters apart each way. In doing this care should be taken that the roots are not doubled up in the hole and that the soil is well packed around them. More plants should never be removed at one time from the seedbed than can be conveniently transplanted before they show signs of wilting, and the dug plants should not be left exposed until the roots dry out. The plants should be thoroughly watered before and after transplanting, and the beds kept free from weeds and watered as often as necessary.
Clearing and planting.—Wherever possible, the land to be planted in coffee should be stumped, and plowed once or twice, so that after the plants have been set out animal-drawn cultivators can be used to keep down the weeds. Thus the cost of weeding is lessened during the early years of the plantation while the plants are small. If plowing is not feasible holes 1 meter in diameter and at least 30 centimeters deep should be grubbed where the plants are to be set.
On moderately rich land robusta coffee should be planted 2.1 meters apart each way, 2,265 plants to the hectare; on very fertile land the distance may be increased to 2.5 meters, or 1,600 plants to the hectare.
Arabian coffee should be spaced from 2 to 2.5 meters apart or on poor lands even closer.
When the plants are 4 to 5 months old they should be about 20 centimeters tall and ready for transplanting. About one-half of the foliage should now be cut off; a trench should be dug at the end of the nursery bed about 20 centimeters or more deep; then a thin, sharp spade or bolo (cutlass) should be passed through the soil, underneath and around the plant, neatly severing all straggling roots, and leaving the plant in the center of a ball of earth. The plants should be set out in the field at the same depth at which they grew in the nursery, great care being taken not to break the ball. If the soil is so loose that it falls away from the roots in the removal from the nursery, great care should be exercised in not allowing the roots to dry out and in setting out the plant so that the roots fall in a natural position. In the course of the planting the soil should be firmly packed about the roots.
The sowing of the seed in a given locality should be so timed that the plants are ready for transplanting at the beginning of the rainy season in order to avoid the expense of artificial watering. If transplanted during the dry season the plants necessarily would have to be watered by hand from time to time until they are established.
Plants for shade.—As a temporary shade and cover crop of rapid growth while the coffee trees are small, perhaps no plant can compete with the cadios (Cajanus indicus). The plants may be cut down to serve as mulch whenever they grow too high, and may be expected to grow from the stubble twice before the plants die, provided they are not cut off too close to the ground.
In Java, where robusta coffee is more extensively planted than anywhere else, permanent shade is considered advisable. Malaganit (Leucaena glauca), a leguminous shrub which grows everywhere in the Philippines, seems to be preferred there to other plants for shade. It is planted alternately with the coffee plants and, as is the case with all plants utilized for shade, thinned out later according to need. Madre de cacao (Gliricidia maculata) and dapdap (Erythrina indica and E. subumbrans) are other leguminous trees readily obtainable in most localities and are adapted for shade.