Coffee bean "hulls"

Coffee bean "hulls"
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This trip was quite an education, I learned that pineapples grow low to the ground and not on trees (hey, I never pretended to know much about horticulture) and that coffee beans were actually seeds in berries that grow on a bush.

Here is a pile of coffee "hulls", the discarded fruit that covered the beans/seeds. I asked they guy how they separated the beans from the skin but never got a straight answer. I thought that these skins would make good compost but I didn't see anyone using it as compost and I have to admit that most of the Kenyan farmers I met seemed to have a pretty good grasp of composting so I will assume there is a good reason for not composting these skins/hulls.