Protect Papaya trees (and others, like coffee) from frost

Tonight it will be, hopefully, the last danger of frost night for this season. It usually works like that, when plants need to be covered, the weather is the nastiest and most unfriendly to the poor person who has this task at hand. I had to struggle with the comforters to cover my coffee forest. The trees are quite tall now, and the blankets just did not want to stay put. Finally, after much effort, coffee is covered, and probably grateful. Here it is. Peekaboo!

In the Spring, after coffee stops fruiting - it seems like it never stops fruiting though - I will prune the trees to about four feet of height to make it easier to cover next winter, and to renew the trees. They are supposed to be pruned of dead wood and old branches.

One thing I need to mention is that if there is hard frost coming, something like 28F, these quilt covers will not be sufficient. On cold hard freeze nights I use real comforters on my coffee trees.

Papaya is more tolerant.

Or maybe it is easier to get and grow.

But, for one thing, it is difficult to cover the whole papaya tree, as they usually are pretty tall, and secondly, they regenerate after frost damage rather easily. I normally, just wrap the trunk with the blanket and let the leaves to be damaged. Come spring, papaya will grow new leaves and branches.

Here is papaya tree that is probably four years old. It gets damaged every year, but then it grows new stems from the trunk (that was wrapped), and continues fruiting with abundance.

Keep warm tonight, and before we know, it will be Spring and new gardening adventures here in sunny Florida.

Coffee Seedlings! Growing coffee trees from seed in Florida

In one of my previous posts I talked about my coffee forest consisting of four coffee trees. At the time of this post I planted about twenty seeds from my own harvest. I have never done this before. From what I read on the Internet, coffee can take somewhere from two to six months to germinate from seed.

This morning I was so excited to see two of the seeds sprouting!

So, it's been about two months since planting. As you can see, I just used a regular seedling tray, a leftover from some plants I bought some time ago, that I filled with potting mix. The tray sat on my counter, covered with wrap. Temperature was in the 60's to 70's the whole time, as it is Winter now in Florida. Quite possibly they would've sprouted earlier if the temperature was higher.

However, I would not stand by that statement. I don't know enough of sprouting coffee. Maybe it sprouts in cooler temperatures in anticipation of spring.

I had a good harvest from my existing coffee trees. They are easy to grow and are fun to look at. I am certainly willing to expand my coffee forest to as many trees I can get my hands on, or however many will sprout.