Sunday, July 22, 2018

Cacao repotting and small outdoor greenhouse

Our cacao trees have been growing up and getting taller, so it's time to move them out of their tiny cups.  Following the advice on the Montoso gardens site, we moved them to larger pots (large cups in our case) and used a ~ 1:1:1 mix of perlite, compost, and peat moss. (picture only shows perlite and compost in the mixing bin)





We also needed to split out the plants to another little greenhouse, since they wouldn't fit.  We decided to try putting some of them outside.  We looked around for the right location (the mini greenhouse gets to 135F in all-day full sun!) and settled on a corner under an overhang near our shed.  The goal is to give the greenhouse full sun for either the morning or evening, where the sunlight will be less intense and the heat less of an issue.  Also, we've set up an automatic watering system with 2 misters to keep the humidity high and take the edge off the outside temperature.  100+ degree F temperature might be a challenge for cacao, as it seems they're not normally grown in weather that hot.





As before, we're using our SensorPush humidity + temperature sensor (the tiny box in the top corner of the greenhouse) to track the environment carefully.  It really helps us profile the changes through the day to help keep our plants happy :)

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