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Cacao - The food of the Gods

MiLK_MaN

MiLK_MaN

This year I decided to branch out and grow a whole heap of different things, including plants that aren't really suited to our dry climate here in Melbourne, AUS. While I managed to get some banana and coffee seedlings which are now planted outside, I had troubles finding some cacao plants and had to settle for a whole cacao pod instead.

On ebay, I found an auction for a cacao pod from a cacao tree that had been specially developed by the CSIRO (a research institute in Australia) for Cadbury's (largest chocolate manufacturer for Australia). A whole pod arrived in the mail a few days later:



I was away on travel when the pod arrived, so the wife planted them for me in coco coir pellets and chucked them in my floating tray on top of 28C water germination box, and so far 15 out of 17 have germinated:



I love how the leaves have a translucent effect, but you just have to wonder how fragile those leaves are. I also was surprised that the cacao bean stays attached to the seedling, not sure how long that's going to last for.
 
Very interesting; I drink a cup/mug of cocoa everyday. It's supposed to be excellent for cardiovascular health,but I never thought to grow it. Boing! Good idea.
 
If you are going to grow them, make sure you get a cacao pod fully in tact, and not dried seeds. Apparently they will only germinate if they are fresh from the pod.

They are probably better suited growing in your location, they need shade + humidity. I reckon they'd be a perfect companion underneath a banana plantation.
 
MiLK_MaN said:
If you are going to grow them, make sure you get a cacao pod fully in tact, and not dried seeds. Apparently they will only germinate if they are fresh from the pod.

They are probably better suited growing in your location, they need shade + humidity. I reckon they'd be a perfect companion underneath a banana plantation.
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Possible; I'll have to do some research. It's beer thirty here so tomorrow. Cheers.
 
Thanks for the info.

I've ordered cacao seeds a couple of times in the past, but was never able to get any to germinate.

Now, I'll be looking for a whole fresh pod.;)

dvg
 
AjarnV I think Coco trees grow great in Thailand. One was sold to us when we said how we are having trouble with water draining well from the pots. Was only 100 baht, so we added one to the cart of new plants we got. We will be puting up some pix's here of the new plants in a new topic called 2011 grow season.

MiLK_MaN will you have to wait about 5 years to get fruit from your Cocoa ? What soil mix were you told to use ? We were told to hide ours away from full sun and have the soil wet. But have been told wrong info before as if the plants you buy die or don't do well, you'll buy more. We have learned the best way to grow Citrus trees from Ozzys.
 
Exavier said:
AjarnV I think Coco trees grow great in Thailand. One was sold to us when we said how we are having trouble with water draining well from the pots. Was only 100 baht, so we added one to the cart of new plants we got. We will be puting up some pix's here of the new plants in a new topic called 2011 grow season.

MiLK_MaN will you have to wait about 5 years to get fruit from your Cocoa ? What soil mix were you told to use ? We were told to hide ours away from full sun and have the soil wet. But have been told wrong info before as if the plants you buy die or don't do well, you'll buy more. We have learned the best way to grow Citrus trees from Ozzys.
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Wow 5 years? Too long for me. Cheers.
 
AjarnV said:
Wow 5 years? Too long for me. Cheers.
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I'm not sure 5 years is accurate, but the growing under shade is. From what I have read, young plants do not do well in full sunlight.

The leaves first come up super thin, and very translucent. From there, they turn to a very paper like texture. I have about 5 plants outside at the moment under the canopy of other plants, 4 under Asian Birdseyes and the 5th under a Raspberry bush that has like 1 metre canes.

I've had quite a bit of wind in the last few days, and they seem to have faired well. They are all a single steam, very thin, and look very delicated.

One thing I'm definitely concerned about is the long main root. With peppers, I normally find the entire root ball will consume the pot, but with the Cacao it seems they send a root down as far as they can, but don't send a lot of side shoots. This will make it difficult to continually pot up, and I'm not sure what behaviour the plant will have with not being to send a main root down the 1 - 2 metres they do out in the wild.

I love experimentation though. Especially when people say you can't grow these kind of things down here.
 
We have just planted our Cocoa plant in a big pot. Our plant is over 2 feet tall(60 Cm) it has been cut in half befor we got it so has a v in it plus an other branch lower. It is not growing very fast yet. The Arabica Coffee is doing great and growing fast. Hmm can Cocoa get repoted lots ? As Cinomon does not like it, hoping our Cassia Cinomon will come back after the repoting. I'm stuck as well in using pots as there is not ground here to use. But may as well try and see if we can get things to work with what we've got. The girl we bought the cocoa plant said we'd get cacoa fruit off it after a year. So we'll see.
 
Here's an updated pic of 5 of the plants in a small tent in the garage under a 90 watt LED light.

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In the wild? Very big, like 15 metres big, but that's when they grow directly under forest canopy. The other thing is that they have a 2 metre deep tap root.

In chocolate production, they cut the plants back so they can be reached by the people picking the pods. As the plant itself is extremely easy to break or damage, they can't climb the tree so they normally bind machetes to long poles and cut the pods down that way.

I have no first hand experience at this, it's just what I've read.

I will put some more pics up soon. I've had to pot up some of the plants as I saw roots poking out the bottom of the pots. I've moved them from LED to a 400W CMH (Ceramic Metal Halide) and they seem to be still doing alright. One thing I have done is turn off all air flow in my tents to build the humidity up, which I think they are enjoying. Fresh air can still get into the tents, there's just nothing moving around the plants.
 
I'll I know is mine are growing great here in Thailand. The one I've had the longest is growing faster and sending more shoots out. I'm very glad I got them as they are looking good. Don't need full sun. The second ones tap root is in spiral so its great for the pot I've got it in.
 
Cacao update.

The plants struggled over winter, even though they were in a tent in the garage the entire time. I have about 8 plants that survived, and some are quite big. They all pretty much lost their leaves, but after surviving ~ 10C winter nights (in the tent in the garage, some nights were close to 0C) they have now started to sprout new leaves pretty quickly.

I took them all outside for a watering of some compost tea that I had brewed, so took the opportunity to take some photos.




The leaves don't look super healthy, but as the weather consistently remains high the leaves won't look so bad. Have to think about what I'm going to do when the plants are too tall for the 1.2m grow tent though, whether I chop them from the top to force them to branch out...
 
I've put one of the plants in a pot out the front under the entrance to the house, we'll see how it goes.

No big deal if it dies, got another 8 plants in the garage. The plan is to mist it every day, and bring it inside if the humidity drops really low or when the temperature goes below 10C.

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Plants are still alive, looking a little sick at the moment indoors due to cold weather. I don't think they'll die, just need to sustain them for another 2 months or so then I can move them into a tent in the garage which is currently pre-occupied with a whole bunch of chilli seedlings and other tropical fruit plants.

I do actually have a couple of Cacao plants in the garage at the moment, one is actually flowering at the moment.

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