Chayote: Local Staples to the Nicaraguan Diet

Driving around the Matagalpa state of Nicaragua, we saw many trucks loaded with what looked like either pears or limes. They were green, but not smooth like pears.The skin looked thicker, like limes, but they didn't have the distinctive citrus skin of lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit.

After a bit of research, we found out that these vegetables were called chayote. Chayote are described as being a cross between a cucumber and a potato. They are cooked into soups and stews or served as a side-dish by themselves. I keep reading that they have a subtle, sweet flavor, like cucumber, but, to be completely honest, they didn't taste like anything to me. I guess I would say potato is probably closest, but they are not as firm or as starchy as a potato. I would say they taste like whatever you cook them with, which is a good quality in a vegetable.

We noticed chayote growing in farms along the sides of the roads. Chayote grows on a trellis, and the fruits hang down from trellis. All the farms we passed had the chayote fields in full sun.

Chayote field in full sun.

Because we grow coffee in filtered sunlight (a.k.a. shade), and because we didn't want to take down any of our old-growth trees, and because it's actually against the law to cut down any tree bigger than a certain size, even if you are only planning to use it for a structure on your own farm, and because our agronomist told us to plant our chayote field where he did, we had a pretty lousy chayote crop this year.

Old-growth trees that give our coffee a shade canopy.

Putting in the trellis for the chayote

Chayote hanging from the trellis.

You have probably figured out already what the problem was that we had. We planted the chayote in filtered sunlight, and, as a result, the crop was pretty bad. We are currently in the process of moving the trellises to a sunnier spot. Yes, we noticed that all the other chayote fields were in full sun before we planted ours, but we were deferring to the experts. This time next year, we'll all be eating fried chayote!

Growing Coffee from Seed

As I mentioned in a previous post, we wound up starting about 100,000 plants from seeds last year. I get pretty excited when I see the "viveros" (nurseries).  It is better to wait until the rainy season to start seeds, so you don't have to do a lot of manual watering.

What we found out is that it really is best if you can start seeds in your own soil. The plants do better if you start them in the same type of soil as they are going to live in later.

You have to start the seeds in the local soil, after the rainy season begins, which in our region (Matagalpa state) starts in April.

Starting plants from seeds.

In the photo above, you can see the seeds sitting on top of the tiny green stem of the plant. In some cases, you can see the seed shell coming off the first set of leaves. When the seedling gets to be about 4" tall above the level of the soil, with two leaves, it is transplanted.   It is important to make sure you only keep the plants which have ONE root (a "bifurcated", or double root, is not a plant that will grow well).  You can see the date in that photo above is 7/30/2010. We should have started these sooner, but last year is the year that we bought 100,000 plants and lost 60,000 to fungus. It takes about 4-5 weeks for the plants to be ready for transplantation.

The seedlings are out of the common bed of soil, ready to go into their own individual bags of soil.

The seedlings after they have been transplanted into their own bags. You can see the row of bags in the back of the photos has the most immature plants.

This is a vivero of very young plants. They thrive in filtered sunlight with daily waterings from Mother Nature, and from us, if it doesn't rain on time.

These plants are bigger. They have four leaves on them.

If you are patient, and lucky, and the weather is good, and about a billion other things go right, your plants eventually look like this:

Coffee plants ready to be transplanted.

Can you see why I get excited?  Below you can see how the plants look once they have been transferred to the soil of the farm. 

You can see one of our young coffee plants next to the scarecrow that one of our workers has carved with a machete into this tree stump. The scarecrows are carved to scare away the devil. The wood is infiltrated with a particular type of fungus that makes it soft that makes it look black and furry. You can also see some young coffee plants behind the scarecrow, under the older trees.

We have yellow coffee cherries!

Right in the middle of our debate about whether to plant the beans (which are actually seeds, not beans) from the mature coffee plants on the farm, our business manager in Nicaragua, Alex, sent us some photos of the other types of mature coffee on the farm: the plants that produce yellow coffee cherries! I had never seen yellow coffee cherries before.

Yellow (yes, these are RIPE) coffee cherries on one of our plants!

Alex said he was not sure of the variety, but a short Google search found me this:

The closest thing I could find to our yellow coffee cherries (from http://www.coffeeresearch.org/agriculture/varietals.htm).

The beans in the bottom photo are called Amarello, and they are a mutation on the Brazillian Bourbon bean. I was able to find quite a few sites selling "sweet yellow bourbon beans." So ... that might be what we have. We will probably have to send a sample somewhere to have it tested.

This, of course, complicates our decision about what seeds to start next. We will have about 1000lbs of coffee from the yellow cherries, so we could plant this year's crop of plants from the yellow beans. We just need to figure out which plant give us the highest quality coffee on our soil at our elevation.

Q Grading Coffee

You know how last week, I told you we would have between 4000-5000lbs. of cafe oro (a.k.a. green beans)? Turns out we are going to have between 5,000 and 10,000lbs. this year.

One of the three contiguous parcels we purchased that comprise Finca La Cumbre today already had mature coffee on it when we purchased it. We have yet to identify what the variety of that bean is. Here are some photos for you, in case you have some idea:

The field of mature coffee plants on our farm. Can you tell us what the variety is?

Ripe coffee beans from the mature plants on the farm.

Last year, in April we purchased 100,000 plants of Caturra Estrella. Sixty thousand of those plants died from fungus. We replaced those by starting our own from the same type of seeds. We also discovered that copper sulfate is an organic-approved fungicide.

Starting coffee from seeds.

We will be starting 100,000 coffee plants from seeds in April, when the rainy season begins. We are trying to figure out whether we should save the beans from the mature plants on the farm. We obviously have more than enough beans. We just don't know how good, objectively, the coffee our mature plants are producing IS.


After quite a bit of research, we came across the logically named Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), which has created a coffee grading system that is globally used. They also provide the training that official coffee graders attend. Turns out that we can have our coffee graded using their system by their local ICP (in-country partner), the Asociación de cafes especiales de Nicaragua (ACEN). Lots of acronyms, but eventually we sorted it all out. So our coffee sample will soon be on its way to the ACEN official graders. They will have three certified graders each score our coffee independently. 


I will, of course, let you know how it goes.  

Malanga: A Tale of A Tuber

I first fell in love with malanga, a root vegetable, in the summer of 2010. Malanga is not a vegetable I had ever tasted before my first trip to Nicaragua in 2010. It is not a particularly glamorous vegetable.

Malanga: Not a very sophisticated looking tuber.

Malanga likes very wet soil. That makes it a perfect partner crop to coffee. We grow malanga in the valleys between the various peaks on the farm. The coffee grows on the sides of the peaks, but at the bottom, where the water sits, we grow malanga. We also grow malanga next to the rivers that run through the farm. Finally, we grow malanga near the natural springs on the farm. 

The large leaves of malanga are common among plants that live in or near water. Also, malanga likes the sun.

Coffee will not survive in any of these places because coffee needs well-drained soil or coffee fungus will take over.  The soil on the farm is truly ideal for coffee, but malanga is happy to grow where coffee cannot.

A field of malanga. You can see the native old-growth forest behind the sun-drenched field of malanga. Coffee is growing under the canopy of shade.

We returned to Nicaragua in June of 2011, and I was looking forward to finding a woman with a basket on her head to purchase more of those wonderful, crispy malanga chips. Imagine my dismay when all the ladies I stopped (and I stopped more than one of them) had only limp, fragile potato chips for sale! Of course, to be polite, I purchased a little baggie of potato chips from each, but I wasn't interested in homemade potato chips.

Bagging up the malanga in 2010.

Malanga chips were almost impossible to find in the summer of 2011. The photo above is from the malanga harvest in early 2010. Unfortunately, the malanga harvest on our farm in early 2011 was almost zero. It was a dry year, and the malanga didn't make it. If there in not enough rain, the malanga rots. I thought that might have been unique to our farm, but apparently the malanga harvest everywhere failed. Considering how many farmers were relying on malanga crops, it was a horrible year for many.

Quequisque also suffered from the lack of rain. Like malanga, quequisque grows in wet areas. It is also a tuber but it has a more delicate flavor than malanga.

I have looked for malanga chips in the U.S. It seems like something they would sell at Trader Joe's, but I have yet to find them.  There are some other varieties of the same type of plant.  One is called "quequisque", and looks almost the same as malanga on the top, but is more of a delicacy because it has a smaller, more delicately flavored root. 

The entire malanga situation is very sad. If you type "malanga Nicaragua" into Google, you will see a long list of "success stories" of co-ops and international aid organizations touting how they have helped local farmers to increase their sales by growing malanga, rather than lower value crops. I wonder if those aid organizations and co-ops taught the value of a diverse crop. Poverty is a very difficult disease to cure.

Other Crops We Grow on the Farm

One of our goals for the finca (farm) was to maintain a rich polyculture. When we purchased the land, some of the land had been (stupidly) cleared of foliage, including some of the old-growth trees that provide the natural shade canopy that makes our coffee so rich and prevents acid development in the beans. Shade allows us to grow a gentle cup of coffee.

Old growth trees provide shade for the coffee.

Because we had to provide shade for certain areas, we looked into what local crops we could grow that would offer both shade and food. Bananas are a natural pick. Our farm is too high to be the ultimate banana-growing environment. Bananas like heat more than coffee does, but we can still grow bananas, which we do.

Banana trees supplement the old growth canopy, some of which was cut away by previous owners.

Green bananas from the farm, ready to go to town. Strangely, Nicaraguans pay a premium for green bananas.

One of the parcels of land we purchased has mature papaya trees. Papayas also provide the ideal filtered shade for the coffee.

Big papayas, on the tree....

Field of papaya trees.

After we purchased the first piece of land that is now part of the farm, the price of beans and corn went up so fast that our workers were having trouble keeping up. We decided to plant some beans and corn on the farm so that they would have food they could afford, and so that they didn't have to go all the way to town (2+ hours on foot plus the bus) to get staples that we could grow on site.

Corn grown on the farm. Nicaraguans use young (not fully ripened) corn to make a popular beverage, so these were picked early.

Field of corn on the farm. Unlike the fields of corn you see driving through Indiana or Illinois, our corn field is far from flat,and it is a rich polyculture. No sprays are used to prevent the growth of weeds or insects. "Live and let live."

When we were in Matagalpa in August of 2010, we saw many women carrying baskets full o little baggies of fried, what looked like potato chips, on their heads. These women were like the Nicaraguan vending machines. They were everywhere. We bought some of these chips, which were malanga chips. They were kind of like potato chips, but denser and less greasy. Also, we noticed that the bag of malanga chips were still crisp after 3 days, while the open bag of potato chips we purchased at the same time were soggy.

Field of malanga plants on the farm. Malanga grows in the wet areas. Alex, our business manager, is in the middle of two farm workers.

Harvested malanga being bagged up for sale.

We loved the malanga chips. Nicaraguans also eat chayote, which looks like a thick-skinned pear, but is actually a vegetable.  More on that tomorrow....

How is Nicaraguan Coffee Different?

Nicaraguan coffee is a milder coffee than you may have tasted in the past. If you are used to drinking "brisk" or even slightly bitter American coffees (like Starbucks), then you might be pleasantly surprised by Nicaraguan coffee.

Ripe coffee beans. Caturra estrella.

Sweet Maria's is an excellent source of information on coffees, as well as home-roasting equipment and green beans (cafe oro). This is what Thompson "Tom" Owens has to say about Nicaraguan coffee:

"Good Nicaraguan coffees are considered "classic" cup: great body, clean flavor, and balance. They are unique among Centrals in the fact that the highest grown (SHG grade: Strictly High Grown) do not develop the pronounced and sharp acidity of other Centrals. The botanical cultivars utilized are traditional: Typic, some Bourbon and Maragogype dominate, along with Caturra and Paca."

One of the nurseries where we grow our coffee from certified seeds.

"..., Jinotega and Matagalpa coffees can demonstrate their remarkable versatility in a wide range of roasts, from light City roast through Full City and into the Vienna range."

Did I mention that our coffee farm is in Matagalpa? Did I mention that all the coffee on our farm is certified "Strictly High Grown" (SGH) because of the altitude of our farm?

Why You Should Look for Shade-Grown Coffee

All our coffee is shade grown. In fact, it is such a rustic, natural farm with so much original native vegetation, that you almost can't find the coffee plants in this picture:

Coffee plants in between native bananas and old-growth trees.

On our farm, high in the mountains of Nicaragua, all the original old-growth trees are left alone. Previous owners started to clear some of the old-growth trees, despite very strict and strictly enforced regulations about cutting down old trees. When we purchased the land, there were quite a few human-felled trees and some Hurricane-Felix-felled trees. Since we purchased the land, we haven't cleared any old-growth trees. We do clear out some of the low-growing vegetation to make room for coffee plants, but as you can see from the photo above, coffee lives in a rich polyculture of indigenous vegetation.

Here I am in that same place as the photo above, with a young coffee plant in front of me. Notice that you could barely see it before I pointed it out.

The Seattle Audubon Society has a fascinating web page about why farmers should grow and you should buy shade-grown coffee. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has created a certification that we are pursuing that certifies coffee "shade grown, bird friendly." It turns out that coffee originally grew entirely in the shade. Recently, varieties of coffee were developed that thrived in full sunshine. The point of full-sun coffee was to increase yields. In fact, coffee plants that grow in full sun can produce up to 3 times as much coffee in a year, however, when these plants were introduced, along with them came the need for more fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. Additionally, the soil was depleted by the plants, and there was more run-off of chemicals into the local water supplies. If you have seen Food Inc., or any other documentary about how the pursuit of higher-yielding plants and livestock have resulted in a more abundant but inferior food supply, then you know the story.

By sticking to shade-grown coffee, we follow the traditions of the native Nicaraguans, and we also protect the soil and water, not to mention protecting the native bird habitats by keeping intact the diverse vegetation that the birds require.

Young coffee plant. Notice the shade from bananas and other native trees falling across the bush.

Also, if great taste is what you seek in a cup of coffee, any professional coffee taster will tell you that shade-grown coffee is a richer, more nuanced cup of coffee than full-sun-grown coffee.

Cafe Oro

Now that we have about 4,000-5,000 lbs. of "cafe oro," from our mature coffee plants this year, I realize I had better get hopping on finding retail outlets for our delicious Nicaraguan coffee. "Cafe oro" means golden coffee, which is the color of the coffee after the husks have been soaked off.This photo shows the unroasted beans, after husks and skin have been removed. This is what is called "cafe oro." Different countries grow different types of coffees, and each type of coffee is processed differently. Many coffees are dry processed. In Nicaragua, water is used to remove the papery skin, so cafe de oro requires that the coffee be dried in the sun. We are pretty small-scale at this point, so we are able to dry our coffee on these screens, propped up on saw horses and boards.

Large, commercial "beneficios" (coffee processing centers) use large outdoor concrete slabs (they kind of look like areas the size of multiple shuffle board courts) to dry the beans in the sun. On any sunny day, you can see the workers out in the drying areas with long-handled flat rakes moving the coffee around so it will all dry out. Thanks to Marvin del Cid for this photo.