Organic Best Practices ~ SOP’s

Permaculture Methods and applications we use:

Planting shade trees - Helps us recover soil nutrients with their deep roots and leguminous species capture much needed Nitrogen and convert it into nitrates which are used by the coffee plant to grow

Compost - our compost pile is typically 30-40%  pasture grasses , 50-60% woody material such as brown straw, brown leaves and wood shavings and 10% cow manure.

Compost extract - as a soil drench to boost the micro organism population in the soil and a bit of organic seaweed as food for the micro-organisms so that they can continue growing in population.

Compost tea - as a foliar application to prevent leaf rust and cover the leaves in good organisms that will feed the plant through the stomates of it's leaves. Compost tea is also an excellent way to grow organisms when we don't have enough compost. It is injected in to the soil or sprayed on the soil around the tree.

Organic pest control - We use Beauveria bassiana (fungal) spores in our compost teas in order to kill leaf cutter ants. These ants eat the leaves off our shade and coffee trees and can wipe out a plantation in just a few days. They use the leaves to grow a fungi that they eat and the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of the queen that lives deep in to their nests in the soil. We use the compost tea to drench the nest and the Beauveria will start to grow on any soft bodied insect. Beauveria can also be used to control the coffee berry borer.

Mulch - We use corse wood shavings on the soil around the trunks of our trees as mulch. This preserves humidity in the soil and increases the fungal biomass in the soil around the trees. 

Cover crops - We are trying to establish a cover crop and have been trying to leguminous plants such as clover and perennial peanut with varying success.