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Anybody got any good tips on growing cacao?
I live in the lower part of Hawaiian Acres. We have one cacao tree that we bought a long time ago and it does great. Tons of cacaos. Like, omg tons of cacaos.
The problem is, anytime we sprout any new trees, they live a while and then mysteriously die, not getting any bigger than maybe six inches. Doesn't seem to matter if it's in potting soil or the ground.
We quit even trying to sprout any after a while, but surely there must be a way for us to get little cacao trees to live. I mean, our big tree is so happy. I'm wondering if there's some weird soil fungus killing the little ones.
Anybody have any experience with this? By the way, my pepper plants seem to do something similar, that is, they grow fine for a while and then just mysteriously die. Sigh.
Thanks for any info. [8D]
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what do you do with your cacao? I found one while over there and had to see what it looked like inside - there wasn't much in it but seeds
islandgirl
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Well, we've experimented with making chocolate with them (fermenting the seeds for a week, then drying them, grinding them up with extra cacao butter and sugar), which is interesting but without the proper equipment to make it smooth enough, it comes out kind of gritty.
I'd actually prefer to just grow lots and lots of cacaos, take them to somebody else who wants to process them, and walk away with money and a little chocolate.
It just seems like cacaos should grow great here if I can just figure out what's killing the small trees.
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i'm interested too. I have a tree that was only about 6 inches tall and about 10 leaves. It finally broke through that stage and started a new set of leaves this week. it's in a greenhouse in glenwood.
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Are you keeping the seedlings in the shade (50%)? What sized pots are you using? I usually sprout the seeds between damp paper towels. When the root starts to grow side filaments, I plant them directly in tall citrus bags with lots of mulch and perlite. I place them under a shade cloth canopy and mist them with a hose a couple times a day. About the time they develop their second set of true leaves, they get some slow release fertilizer. I plant them out (as much as a year or more later) as an ohia forest understory and provide shade cages for them if the spot is too sunny. After they exceed the 4 ft. height of the cage, I remove the cages.
They do really well for me when planted in well-composted Hilo dump mulch and black cinders. I have about a hundred year-old seedlings that are still in bags if you are in a hurry.
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Before I moved over, I had two cacaos in the ground. They both died. Since then, I planted another. It is still alive after 5 months, and growing, but it seems to burn very easily. I definitely have to water it when it gets dry down here, as it wilts pretty quickly (I'm sure they would do better up there). I, too, have shade cloth over mine, but it can get hot and dry down here. I think my cacao would do better under my mango. The guy at the BIAN nursery sale told me that they make their own shade after awhile, but that while young, they need protection and prefer to be under another tree. He told me to make a round cage and put shade cloth over it, until, as Michael Bird says, they get to be about 4 feet tall.
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Thanks for the replies. It's actually been a while since I tried to grow cacaos (got tired of seeing them die) but when we did I believe we just had them in some commercial potting soil or other.
However, we did NOT put them in the shade and mist them, etc. So, that could have been our whole problem.
Next time I do this I'm going to treat them a lot more carefully.
Thanks again.
