Our coffee sapling nursery at Cuatro Camino's farm is the largest centralized nursery we have, with a capacity of up to 100,000 saplings. We use bio-degradable pouches, top-quality soil, and hand-selected seeds of varieties such as Geisha, Tyipca, Caturra, Pacamara, Bourbon, and Red and Yellow Catuai. Once the saplings reach an adequate size we use them to plant out our newer farms and replace older trees in our producing farms that have passed their productivity peak.
We replace these older trees systematically and over about a 3 to 4 year period. When an area of a coffee farm is approaching the end of its productive lifespan, new saplings are planted in the rows in between trees, growing safe in the shade of the older trees until they reach production. At that time the older trees are removed, the new trees are already producing, and the entire section is renovated. This process allows us to maintain the quality of our farms and our coffee without massively affecting the production capacity.