These days, it is grown within 20° of the equator, with Ivory Coast being the major producer. The CSIRO have performed some trials in far North Queensland, but the labour costs in Australia has really prevented the commercial take up of growing Cacao as there is no current way to use machines to perform this task.
I went to a few nurseries and asked if it was possible to get a Cacao seedling in... each time I was laughed at suggesting it wasn't possible to grow Cacao in Melbourne. The challenge was set, and I hunted around for either seeds or a plant to grow.
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| In tact Cacao pod |
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| Cacao nibs |
I hunted around on Ebay, and actually found someone selling pods from Cacao trees grown in Australia under the CSIRO trial. I knew the seeds needed to be inside the pod for viability, so getting my hands on a fresh Cacao pod without customs confiscating the package was a bonus.
Germination was fairly easy, 2 nibs were inserted into each Jiffy pellet, and it wasn't long before I had close to 20 Cacao plants. The new leaves of Cacao plants are translucent, so delicate, and then turn paper like when they turn a deep shade of green.
Fast forward over a year, and some of my plants are now close to a metre tall. They were all kept in a tent in the garage over winter, where they pretty much all lost their leaves despite being under a horticulture light to keep them warm.
In December of 2011, I decided to try my luck of putting one of the Cacao plants in a pot outside. It gets extremely dry here in Melbourne over summer, so lots of misting is required to keep the plant moist for a long a period as possible.
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| Taken on 2011-12-18 |
Cacao grow under the canopy of rainforest trees, so receive dappled sunlight in their natural environment. I decided to put this directly under my front entrance, and this meant the plant only received a period of about 15 minutes of morning sunlight for the entire day. I still assumed that this was going to be too much for the plant, and also with the lack of humidity, that the plant would slowly wither and die.
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| Taken on 2012-01-23 |
It has now been over a month since the plant has been outside, and I've now moved it to a position where it gets a bit more sunlight. Let's hope that twice daily misting will allow it to survive and flourish, I've taken a look in the last day or so and I can see new leaves forming.
With the confidence that having the plant outside under the shade wasn't going to kill it, I decided on the weekend to pot up my best growing plant from the garage, which is just shy of a metre tall!
These plants will need to come inside over winter, who knows where the hell I am going to put them with the other 3 Frangipanis I've committed to keeping indoors as well.
