I planted two monkeypod trees (Samanea saman). These massive trees have distinctive wide umbrella shaped crowns and are commonly grown around parks in Hawaii. In fact they are growing everywhere around the tropics. In Central America, the Caribbean, South East Asia, throughout the Pacific islands, and even Madagascar – all cacao growing regions! It’s a popular wood for woodworking and can be turned into beautiful furniture.
These trees were grown from seed by Keith who lives in our neighborhood. My friend Bobby suggested that I plant them close enough so that we can build a tree house in them one day. I ventured out to the far end of the farm beyond the fence where it’s wild pig territory and I planted the trees about 35 feet apart. There’s maybe about 0.75 acres back there where we haven’t even touched yet and we can easily plant close to 300 more cacao trees in this fallow area. The monkeypod trees will provide some good shade, wind protection, and maybe even a spot for a tree house. They are nitrogen fixers and an old monkeypod with a 50 feet wide crown can absorb about 28.5 tons of CO2 annually.
I decided to celebrate almost 200 days of planting by firing up the bbq grill and we made fajitas with white pineapple salsa for dinner tonight. Julia said “Only about 165 more days to go.”
Originally posted on 2021-07-18, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.