Growing Coffee Plants Indoor

Growing Coffee Arabica plants indoor is easy, but do you have the patience to wait 3-4 years until will harvest yor first beans from your own coffee plant?

The botanical name is "Coffea Arabica", other names used being "coffee shrub of Arabia", "mountain coffee" or "arabica coffee" and is one of the 90 members of Coffea genus from Rubiaceae Family, originally to the Arabian Peninsula, Ethiopia and Sudan.

 Coffea Arabica Plants in October 2010

Is said that they are vigorous growers (almost 1.5m high) but based on my experience, after one year, my coffee plants have only 40 cm high.
They are very ornamental plants and may live on for 60 years.

Coffea Arabica Plants in March 2010

I'm enjoying their glossy, wavy at the edges, dark green leaves. I keep them in bright light, no direct sun, on the shelf next to my books, because the coffee "tree" is actually a variety of tropical evergreen shrub. The room temperature is somewhere between 20-23°C. I planted them in Miracle-Gro Potting-Mix with some Turface MVP (soil conditioner), to provide a good drainage.

Diagram of Coffea Arabica - courtesy of Wikimedia.org

Coffee plants produce white star-shaped flowers, with sweet scent similar with jasmine smell, but only after 3 or 4 years.
Coffea Arabica flowers are followed by green fruits, each having 2 seeds inside, which are turning the colour to red, then almost black when ripped ("cherries" are ready for picking in few months).







I fertilized them only once a month with an all purpose fertilizer (10-10-10). Also I misted occasionally with warm water and I cleaned the leaves gentle with a damp cloth to avoid leaf staining. My plants were propagated from seeds, and was very fragile.  I re-potted them in nice ceramic pots in March and I tried to train few of them as a bonsai, but I lost some because were snapped when I wired them. I keep one plant wired for a month, carefully bending the trunk over one rock, but I removed the wire too early and the plant returned to its original position very quickly.

Coffee Plant in October 2010

Coffee Plant in March 2010

I'm waiting to yield my first Organically Coffee Beans and to drink a real cup of coffee from my house plants ;-)

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