11-13-2008, 06:05 PM
Coffee will fill the gap quite nicely and give you some good brew, too. If you want some young seedling coffee trees, come by and get them, there's loads of them sprouting under the coffee trees in the back yard.
If you just let a coffee tree grow, it will get to be a shrubby tree about twelve to twenty feet tall, but they don't grow that fast and you want to keep them low enough to reach the coffee anyway. Ours were whacked down to about a foot and a half tall about seven years ago and they are nice bushy tall shrubs now. As soon as they get as tall as you want them, pinch off the top two leaves at the top of the stem and they will quit growing up and branch out. I will usually thin out all but two or three stems coming up from where they were whacked off at but if you want shrubs you could let them all branch out.
If you just let a coffee tree grow, it will get to be a shrubby tree about twelve to twenty feet tall, but they don't grow that fast and you want to keep them low enough to reach the coffee anyway. Ours were whacked down to about a foot and a half tall about seven years ago and they are nice bushy tall shrubs now. As soon as they get as tall as you want them, pinch off the top two leaves at the top of the stem and they will quit growing up and branch out. I will usually thin out all but two or three stems coming up from where they were whacked off at but if you want shrubs you could let them all branch out.
Kurt Wilson