Pruning time

Pruned grapes, blueberries, blackberries, and apple trees today.

This is one of our first times trying pruning.

Blueberry plant shown.

Cacao back outside in new greenhouse setup

After trying several options for humidity, we found a 3 head fogger from www.thehouseofhydro.com that is strong enough to keep the humidity high even while the heater is working hard.  After a few days near 75F and 70% humidity in the inner area, we moved about half of the trees back out there.  We replanted the trees into gallon milk jugs which we hung with a shower rod through the handle.  We made a makeshift punch to cut the holes with a one foot section of closet rod, given an edge with a round file.

New cacao seeds

We recently shared some fresh cacao fruit with family and kept the remaining seeds.  They were partially refrigerated for a week or more, so I hope they're still viable, but here goes!  First, we removed the skins and fruit from most of them, with our kids helping.  Some we left on, because pulling off skins forever...

If all goes well, we'll see them grow longer taproots later this week.  Until then, we'll need to change the water daily, or more often for the seeds with skins still on them.

Here is the page we use for instructions, from the same place we buy our pods:
http://www.montosogardens.com/cacao_seed_propagation_tips.htm

Christmas Chocolate!

We've made some significant progress in the area of chocolate presentation and candy making.  In this shot are truffles, toffee, almond bark, and peanut butter cups.  These are for various friends and family we're seeing or sending to this year.  Shout out to http://www.cocoasupply.com for having great prices on beans and cocoa butter, that let us afford to make somewhere around 25lbs of chocolate this last month.  In fact, the chocolate pictured is only a portion of what we've made so far - the fancy looking part.

During this, we've made some new chocolate recipies and tried new things.  It's been a great chance to experiment.  I plan to write up our recipes later as a separate post.  For now, have a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a great New Year!

Peanut picking

We got maybe 1/2gal of peanuts in shell when we pulled the plants out of the shed today, after drying for a month or two.  We skipped some nuts that looked moldy or bad, since I've read that peanuts can attract a certain mold that is carcinogenic if eaten O.o

I started shelling them, but it's taking a while...

Pecan harvest

The pan is 1 night of pecan harvesting (~20min) by 2 people.  It seems we only harvest at night because that's when we have time to wander around in the yard - outside looking at the ground with flashlights. :P

The bags are from previous nights this year.

Bring on the pink

We bought a nice LED grow light (Phlizon 'Newest 600W', though only uses ~110W) to supplement our cacao trees.  It's really bright and I'm optimistic that it will help our plants grow well even with shorter winter days.

One problem, though, is that the pink glow is quite visible, even from the street.  I have preemptively told the police department to call me if they have questions, as grow lights like this are not usually used for cacao plants.

On another note, it seems our heating system is keeping up in the inner greenhouse area, which is good!  This is our first winter with a greenhouse, so there's been a lot of work/anxiety on my part trying to get it ready and tuned properly.  I understand now why people use kits and predesigned greenhouse systems.