The plantations are generally laid out in squares. The distance between each plant varies according to the fertility of the soil: in a soil not considered fertile, a distance of six feet is preserved, and in each interval is a _dádap_ tree for the purpose of affording shade; but in a rich soil, where the plant grows more luxuriantly, fewer _dádaps_ are necessary, and the plants are placed at a greater distance from each other.
On Java a certain degree of shade seems necessary to the health of the coffee-plant, especially in low situations and during its early age; and the _dádap_ is found better calculated for affording this protection than any other shrub in the country. It is a common saying, that where the _dádap_ flourishes, there also will flourish the coffee: but they are not always constant or necessary companions; for in high lands many of the most flourishing gardens are to be observed with very few _dádaps_. The coffee tree yields fruit for a period of twenty years, yet in the low lands it seldom attains a greater age than nine or ten years (during six or seven of which only it may be said to bear), and the fruit is comparatively large and tasteless.
About the end of the rainy season, such coffee plants and _dádaps_ as have not thriven are replaced by others, and the plantations cleaned: this latter operation, in gardens well kept, is generally performed three or four times in the year: but the tree is never cut or pruned, and is universally allowed to grow in all its native luxuriance. In this state, it often in favoured situations attains the height of sixteen feet, and plants of not less than eight inches broad have frequently been procured from the trunk. The general average produce of a coffee-tree is not estimated at much more than a _káti_, or a pound and a quarter English, notwithstanding some yield from twenty to thirty _kátis_.
There does not appear to be any fixed or certain season for the coffee to arrive at maturity. In the _Súnda_ districts the gathering usually commences in June or July, and it is not till April that the whole crop is delivered into store. The season, however, generally gives what is termed three crops; of which the first is but small, the second the most abundant, and the third, being what is left to ripen, may be considered rather as a gleaning. When the berries become of a dark crimson colour, they are plucked one by one, with the assistance of a light _bámbu_ ladder or stage, great care being taken not to shake off the blossoms which are still on the tree, or to pluck the unripe fruit. The women and children usually collect the crop, while the husband is elsewhere engaged in harder labour. Attached to every principal village, near which there are coffee plantations of any extent, there is a drying-house, to which the newly gathered coffee is brought: it is there placed on hurdles, about four feet from the floor, under which a slow wood fire is kept up during the night. The roof of the drying-house is opened in the mornings and evenings, to admit the air, and the berries are frequently stirred to prevent fermentation. As the heat of the sun is considered prejudicial, the roof of the house is closed during the day. This operation is repeated till the husk is quite dry. The berries dried in this way are small, and of a sea green or greyish colour, and are supposed to acquire a peculiar flavour from the smoke, although it does not appear that any particular kind of wood is used for fuel. When dried in the sun, the bean becomes of a pale bleached colour, is larger, specifically lighter, and more insipid to the taste than the former. The most common mode of freeing the bean from the husk is, to pound the berries when dry in a bag of buffalo's hide, great care being taken not to bruise the bean. A mill of simple construction is sometimes used, but is not found to answer so well. The coffee being then separated from the husk, is put into bags or baskets, and kept on raised platforms till the season of delivery, when it is carried down to the storehouse, sometimes by men, but generally on the backs of buffaloes and mares, in strings of fifteen hundred or two thousand at a time.