The nursery is coming along beautifully this year! As we do every year we have 15,000 cacao started that will be cared for until October / November and then these will be planted under the canopy so the cacao can take advantage of the shade.
Thanks to our team’s success in germinating Salmwood trees last year we decided to do all of our hardwood’s in-house at Finca Chocolat this year rather than souring them from the supplier we had worked with for the last few years. This will allow us to have greater control over the care of the saplings, reduce our cost per tree and eliminate transportation costs to get the Salmwood saplings onsite. A major improvement on multiple fronts over previous years.
We had been planning to put in another 3,500 Salmwood trees this year but thanks to selling multiple units in our 506(c) PPO to tour attendees we have a bit of extra capital to invest and will be putting in 8,000+ Salmwood in 2024. We are grateful that the timing worked out so well and for the vote of confidence in our team!
Pictured below is Benefilia transplanting a Salmwood sapling from the nursery tray into the nursery bag where it will grow for the next 4 to 5 months before being planted into the old cattle pastures. Within 3 years these 3″ saplings will grow into nearly 30′ trees which will provide enough shade to begin planting cacao in those areas of Finca Chocolat.
