In some of the Southern States Cacao Plant could be grown at home ~ wondering,, do you ```

[valley ranch]

I was wondering if any of us actually grew a Cacao plant or plants ```

I was reading about this plant ~ never seen on except in a picture, if you or family or friends has please tell us about it ~ thanks

Cocoa Tree Seeds: Tips On Growing Cacao Trees

It comes as no surprise that some people would like to grow their own cacao tree. The question is how to grow cocoa beans from cocoa tree seeds? Click this article to find out about growing cacao trees and other cocoa tree info.

www.gardeningknowhow.com

 

[valley ranch]

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Regular price$89.95 Sale price

 

[baymule]

Not me! It needs to stay above 60 degrees. Interesting, but it's a no for me.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

Arabica- medium roast for me. And the occasional multi vitamin.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Around here the pods turn a reddish brown instead of yellow. It's a fussy tree to get started, it prefers kinda a moist forest environment and shady when it's a young tree but more sun when it's grown. I haven't seen it turn into a huge tree, just sorta about the size of probably many apple trees. Not that we have a whole lot of apples around here since it doesn't get cold enough.

I have friends who grow it and make the pods into chocolate, although it's a longer and more labor intensive project than coffee. I think there's a fermentation stage in it somewhere and there was mention of 'polishing' or some such. But these are people who make bread starting with wheat instead of flour so they don't mind that sort of project. Even so, they just do it as an occasional project and not all the time.

There's a commercial place somewhere on the island who will buy the pods and they're making chocolate, but I think they're over by Southpoint (this is Hawaii Island, aka the "Big Island") somewhere so I've not gone there to see how they do things.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

For a hobby it might be interesting (not for me, who would need a greenhouse, but for someone)

However I doubt it would be viable as a moneymaker on a hobby growing level. The only way I can see one making money on a small amount would be to grow one of the ultra premium types (the so called "criollo" chocolates*) AND have a market for BOTH the beans AND the pulp (used in some tropical fruit drinks).

 

[Niele da Kine]

From what my friend said, if they were closer to the processing place, they'd be able to make a little bit of money selling cacao pods to them but it's so far away that they'd spend more in gas to get there than they'd make selling the pods. They only have one or two trees, though.

With most things in Hawaii, we don't have 'economy of scale' so we can't really do commodity crops. High end stuff sold directly to the consumer is about the only way for farming and ranching to be viable around here. Which cacao would be, one wold think? The farmers/ranchers pretty much have to do it all from harvesting, processing, packaging and selling since we don't have a lot of the various processing facilities since there's not enough crops for them to process. Some crops like Kona coffee and beef have processing and selling support but a lot of crops are still at the "grow it and sell it at the farmer's market" level.

Macadamia nuts used to be a big cash crop, but there's basically just one processing facility and after they got enough of their own trees to keep their facility busy they pretty much quit buying nuts from other folks. Since mac nuts have really hard shells and are somewhat difficult to process, the small mac nut farmers don't have anywhere to sell the nuts now and pretty much have been selling their crops as pig food if they're even bothering to pick the nut at all. There used to be a lot of cut flower production, but some sort of trade bill was signed which allowed foreign flowers to be sold in the U.S. so that market collapsed. The big collapse was when they pulled the support from under sugar. We had a huge amount of sugar planted in Hawaii. Once that trade law was signed which allowed foreign sugar to be sold in the U.S. the whole market collapsed overnight. It took years for our island to get back on it's feet again and there's still a lot of old cane fields which aren't really productive anymore. They tried timber, but that didn't work. Especially since they were trying for a commodity crop and we don't have the economy of scale for it. They'd have done a lot better to plant cacao trees instead of those stupid eucalyptus pulp paper trees.

We have a small chocolate processing facility somewhere on the island, but there's only one that I've heard of. I don't know if they've planted out their own cacao trees or if they're just depending on folks to bring in pods from their backyard trees or what. There's multiple coffee processing facilities. There was someone doing vanilla, but I think they now make most of their money selling vanilla flavored foods at their restaurant. A few honey producers, not sure how the goat cheese folks are doing. There's a couple of tea farms. We have a whole bunch of small producers, not sure how many of them are supporting themselves by their crops, a lot of folks grow coffee, tea, beef - and I'd suppose the chocolate as well - as a side line for extra money but very few of them depend on the crops to pay the mortgage.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

We have a small chocolate processing facility somewhere on the island, but there's only one that I've heard of. I don't know if they've planted out their own cacao trees or if they're just depending on folks to bring in pods from their backyard trees or what. There's multiple coffee processing facilities. There was someone doing vanilla, but I think they now make most of their money selling vanilla flavored foods at their restaurant. A few honey producers, not sure how the goat cheese folks are doing. There's a couple of tea farms. We have a whole bunch of small producers, not sure how many of them are supporting themselves by their crops, a lot of folks grow coffee, tea, beef - and I'd suppose the chocolate as well - as a side line for extra money but very few of them depend on the crops to pay the mortgage.

Well, as for the goat cheese, I imagine Surfing Goat Dairy got a boost by being chosen as the cheese to serve at President Obama's inaugural dinner. But I can see that that cachet probably hasn't lasted. Pity (I always wanted to try that cheese smoked with Kiawe wood).

Not being a Hawaiian, I have no idea what is and is not a viable cash crop there. Most of the ideas I'd have would in that situation would be somewhere between unfeasible and illegal (like trying to start a farmed koa wood business, which would probably both encourage the further destruction of wild trees (which I know is illegal) and sap the supply of seed for re-forestation. I think keppel fruit would be fun, but the market is probably negligible.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Kiawe is mesquite so you may be able to find mesquite smoked goat cheese? I think Surfing Goat Dairy is on Maui? Maybe it's on Oahu, they're not on our island. We have a goat dairy up mountain from us, but they don't surf.

Farmed koa is legal and the seed bank is already in the soil. Just get to the right elevation scurf up the ground and koa will sprout. We were looking to start a koa farm a decade or two ago but we didn't get the land we were hoping to get. Looking back now, it's okay. It would have been fun to start a koa farm, but it would have been tons of work, too. I'm surprised there's not more tropical hard woods like teak and mahogany being grown. Grown, felled, dried, cut into lumber and made into furniture and other crafted items. That would be quite profitable, especially if it were sold directly to the consumer.

Of all of us who live in Hawaii, not very many of us are Hawaiian. You can live in Vegas and be Hawaiian if you have the right ancestors. There's Kama'aina, which is folks who live in Hawaii and aren't of the blood. Locals is another term used for non-Hawaiian folks living here although that term usually designates some non-Hawaiian who was born here. It gets complicated and nuanced and confusing, but you only get to be Hawaiian if your ancestors were.

What's keppel fruit? Are they tasty?

We have loads of oddball fruits around here, but until the consumers are educated, a lot of the exotics are hard to sell. However, if it's tasty, maybe we could grow one just for our own eating.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I think the problem with farming wood is twofold. First it takes a long time and a major investment that won't be paid out on for years or even decades. Secondly, the legal trade provides a market for the illegal trade to disappear into, so people like CITES want to stop the whole thing.

Keppel, (Steleocarpus burahol) is a fruit in the Annoacae (custard apple family) from Indonesia. It is supposedly tasty, but it's main claim to fame is making everything that comes out of you (sweat, urine, you name it) smell like violets. Indonesian rajas used to grow the trees next to their harems so their concubines would smell nice for them.