On Sunlight and Rain Water

That is my DH Brad trying to pull a dead coffee tree because it was eaten by some insects, borers perhaps. My late mom planted many coffee trees on this left side of the hill garden and they were all growing nicely until some insects ate all the top leaves and finally the plants died. Anyway, the fruits of the coffee plants that were planted under the shade of the tall pine trees are said to be more flavourful as compared to those planted under the sun. In fact, many of the Barangays surrounding the former American base have planted coffee trees under tall pine trees. My late mom has planted most of her 10 feet tall coffee trees some 50 years ago. We have gathered many bean fruits from our coffee trees and used them for our own personal consumption. She never used insecticide or spray on the coffee trees so we could say that these are organic coffee trees. The month of January to February is when we gather the bean fruits and we process them manually. Nothing beats the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans and then grinding them manually to make a pot of coffee.

Filtered sun hits this left side of the hill garden but only for about 2-3 hours in the morning. During noontime, the branches of the tall pine trees and the contour of the hill blocks the sun out so this side of the garden is mostly in shade. The lower part of this left side however, gets about 2-3 hours of sunlight when the sun goes down.  About 30 feet in front of where my DH is standing, there is a steep drop of about 15 feet below. The rain water coming from above the hill eroded this part of the garden some 30 years ago and it took a big chunk of the soil away. If you look closely in the picture above, just behind my DH is where the rain water has washed out the soil from under the pine tree. We had to make several ditches on some portions of the upper hill just to control the flow of water and to redirect it so as to reduce soil erosion. Behind my DH is a low stone terrace that my late mom built to conserve the top soil from being washed downhill. She built several stone terraces all by herself using some rocks that she found around the garden. These terraces are of various heights, the tallest is about 4 feet and some are 1-2 feet high depending on the contour of the hill.

On the right side of the hill garden is a gentle slope specially in the middle. The lower and upper portion is somewhat steep so my late mom made some stone terraces on these areas. The flat surface at the top of the terraces were used for planting vegetables and this part gets about 5-6 hours of sun from noon time until sunset. There is no source of water supply in this hill garden so we rely mostly on rain water. There is a creek at the bottom of the hill but it is too laborious to go downhill and haul a heavy bucket or pail of water going uphill. This is why we use this hill garden mostly for planting coffee trees.