How to Plant Cocoa

How to Plant Cocoa

• Cocoa is a wild plant and can be suitable to cultivate it in a bushy or forest like environment where the trees are not exposed to direct sunrays but remain in shades.
• Topsoil and sub-soil should be separated, the soil mixed with well-fermented manure and filled back into the hole where you are going to plant your Cocoa tree
• Planting of Cocoa should be done at the on-set of the rainy season and necessary care should be taken to remove potting bags from the seedlings and safely disposing them.
• Transplant of the seedlings when steady rains set in before the dry season.
• Harden off seedlings meant for planting, by gradually increasing light and reducing humidity. This takes 28days.
• Transfer the hardened off seedlings into the field, ensure to remove the polythen leaving the seedling with a ball of earth.
• Put it in a hole and cover firmly with top soil first then subsoil.
• Water thinly and mulch to conserve the soil moisture. However, a small space of 5-6cm around the seedlings base should be left clear to allow air circulation.
• Generally, cocoa does not need many fertilisers after planting because the trees generate fertilizers by dropping leaves which leaves decompose and make manure