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I live in the Netherlands, where the climate is very unstable. Whilst I love my coffee and love doing a lot of stuff myself, the urge to grow my own coffee had risen. I was wondering if the Dutch climate makes for good coffee / coffee plants.

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  • My guess is that given that coffee is a high altitude tropical plant, maybe not... but this is more a question for the gardening site.
    – SAJ14SAJ
    Dec 19, 2013 at 22:13

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Coffee is considered a tropical plant and is not going to overwinter in the Netherlands. It makes a good house plant but there are some obstacles between you and a cup of coffee you grew and processed yourself.

  • a plant capable of fruiting is two to three meters tall
  • it is usually three to five years old before flowering and producing beans
  • the beans can take nine months to ripen on the plant
  • under good cultivation one tree can produce one to two kilograms of beans a year depending on variety

More notes about cultivation are found here:

Important growing factors are:

Avoiding excessive cold and heat.

1200-1500mm of rain per annum.

A few hours of light per day.

No strong winds.

Altitude - The higher the better.

The last might be the most challenging for growing coffee in the Netherlands.

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  • Sounds like something that's very hard to accomplish but still doable. I'm not very fond of robusta beans due to their muddy taste so I think I will go with arabica in this case. Unless robusta is a more friendly plant. Doe you happen to know some sort of robusta that mimics the taste of a arabica bean?
    – Nkciy84
    Dec 20, 2013 at 7:40
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While you can grow coffee at home, you are almost certainly not going to be able to grow it outdoors in the Netherlands. Coffee tends to only grow well in fairly mountainous equatorial regions with moderate temperatures.

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Why not start seeds and grow them in a container this year? You can bring it inside before cold weather threatens and take it with you when you move. I am pretty sure coffee plants are zone 10. I saw one in the Logee's Greenhouse catalog the other day and thought it would be cool to grow one, but then came to my senses and decided I wouldn't want one more plant that I had to overwinter inside.

I've linked the coffee plant page from Logee's because it tells you a tiny bit about the temps and conditions the coffee plants need.

Here is a link that might be useful: Coffee Plant

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