Saturday, November 3, 2018

Cacao and pineapples were grown near Savannah!




We needed to know this.  That means both cocao and pineapples can be grown in the State of Georgia and they should.  It also reminds us that we have the technology to plant plenty of tropical plants even in the more northern reaches.

Recall the tomato in particular.  They have to be seeded and taken through initial growth in a hot house.  Only then do you set them out as the sun reaches summer equinox.  The heat and moisture of the summer allows them to fill out and ripen inside six weeks and continuously thereafter until first frost.  Yet every home gardener is happy to do just that.

Thus the growing time you are concerned with for annuals is transplantation to fruit maturity, rather than from seeding time.  Perennials obviously have frost issues, yet even there we have real options and we are getting much better at it.

Otherwise we need frost resistant trees and that is not so difficult as we know from the many varieties rolled out...


Cacao (chocolate) originated in the Amazon Basin! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cacao and pineapples were grown near Savannah!

Posted by Richard Thornton | Oct 26, 2018 | Agriculture, DNA, Mexico, News, South America | 0 |

https://peopleofonefire.com/cacao-chocolate-originated-in-the-amazon-basin-cacao-and-pineapples-were-grown-near-savannah.html


NEWS UPDATE

An international team of scientists have just announced the results of a comprehensive genetic analysis of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. A wild species of cacao tree, growing in the Amazon Basin was domesticated about 3,600 years ago. Perhaps a century or so after this event, immigrants showed up in southern Mexico with domesticated cacao trees. They were primary progenitors of the Olmec* Civilization. * The Olmecs had nothing to do with the Olmec Civilization. They arrived in southern Mexico about 1500 years after the “Olmec” Civilization had waned.

To learn more, go to: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181024122416.htm

Gourmet chocolates from Savannah anyone?

Did you know that the Uchee living near Savannah grew pineapples and cacao? They cultivated varieties of these two crops, which had been specifically adapted to the colder winters of the region around Savannah. You won’t find that information in most history books or anthropology texts, but it is a fact. German artist, George Von Reck, immigrated to Savannah shortly after its founding. He immediately became fascinated by the Uchee and Creek Indians living immediately adjacent to the new town. His beautiful water colors and ink sketches include renderings of cacao, pineapple and a tropical variety of a sweet Caribbean squash, which were being successfully cultivated by the Uchee.
It is not known why Georgia colonists didn’t immediately jump on the idea of cultivating these plants commercially for export back to England. A horrific smallpox epidemic in the early 1750s decimated the friendly Native population living near Savannah. Most of the survivors either moved upstream on the Savannah River to near Augusta or relocated to the Oconee, Ocmulgee and Altamaha Rivers. Apparently, these new locales were too cold in the winter to successfully continue cultivation of cacao and pineapple. Below are some of Von Reck’s drawings.

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