Author Topic: Baby cacao needs some help.  (Read 722 times)

The_Last_Saxon

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Baby cacao needs some help.
« on: June 19, 2020, 11:52:33 PM »



My baby cacao isn't very happy, as you can see in the pic. Any ideas what's wrong ? (It's currently being grown with a grow light but I don't keep it too close to the light (~3 feet away ) so I don't think it's being burned ... any help would be nice. Thanks.

Gouralata

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Re: Baby cacao needs some help.
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2020, 12:26:20 AM »
I think that the air is too dry and the pot too small.

Gouralata (Reunion Island)

Daintree

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Re: Baby cacao needs some help.
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2020, 02:15:00 PM »
Usually dry leaf tips indicate overwatering.  They like to be moist but not really wet, and well-draining.  As far as the air being too dry, I live in the high desert and I have ten young cacao trees, at least twenty seedlings, and several mature blooming (5+ years old) ones, and although the humidity is a bit higher in the greenhouse, it never gets over 50% all summer, and I would imagine that Vancouver is plenty humid enough. 
The other spots MAY be due to too much fertilizer.  What are you feeding the kiddo?  I usually use very little fertilizer on the seedlings (I dose them about like my orchids...).
The older leaves tend to dry out in general, and the newer leaves look good, except the one I see with a dry tip, so I would just let it go, but keep and eye on the watering and fertilizing.

Cheers,
Carolyn

TomekK

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Re: Baby cacao needs some help.
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2020, 03:13:30 PM »
It might be a number of things. Like Daintree said, overwatering or fertilizer burn are likely possibilities. It may be low humidity. I have had some seedlings look just like that when inside the (dry) house, while others look just fine with low humidity. It may also be a shock if you recently moved them or repotted them. To me it looks like too low humidity, and maybe overwatering. Low humidity will also make any other problems worse. But then again, what do I know. I’ve only killed 60 of them this past winter...

(Due to the shock of bringing them indoors coupled with low humidity. I do think the brown spots on the interior of the leaves of your cacao are from low humidity. I had that happen to some varieties of cacao before I took them outside last year, as well as to the one I left outside my grow tent)