Other things being equal, preference should be given to a not too tenacious, clayey loam. Selection, in fact, may be quite successfully made through the process of exclusion, and by eliminating all soils of a very light and sandy nature, or clays so tenacious that the surface bakes and cracks while still too wet within 3 or 4 inches of the surface to operate with farm tools. These excluded, still leave a very wide range of silt, clay, and loam soils, most of which are suitable to cacao culture.
Where properly protected from the wind a rocky soil, otherwise good, is not objectionable; in fact, such lands have the advantage of promoting good drainage.
Preparation of the Soil.
When the plantation is made upon forest lands, it is necessary to cut and burn all underbrush, together with all timber trees other than those designed for shade. If such shade trees are left (and the advisability of leaving them will be discussed in the proper place), only those of the pulse or bean family are to be recommended. It should also be remembered that, owing in part to the close planting of cacao and in part to the fragility of its wood and its great susceptibility to damage resulting from wounds, subsequent removal of large shade trees from the plantation is attended with difficulty and expense, and the planter should leave few shade trees to the hectare. Clearing the land should be done during the dry season, and refuse burned in situ, thereby conserving to the soil the potash salts so essential to the continued well-being of cacao.
The land should be deeply plowed, and, if possible, subsoiled as well, and then, pending the time of planting the orchard, it may be laid down to corn, cotton, beans, or some forage plant. Preference should be given to “hoed crops,” as it is essential to keep the surface in open tilth, as well as to destroy all weeds.
The common practice in most cacao-growing countries is to simply dig deep holes where the trees are to stand, and to give a light working to the rest of the surface just sufficient to produce the intermediate crops. This custom is permissible only on slopes too steep for the successful operation of a side hill plow, or where from lack of draft animals all cultivation has to be done by hand.
Cacao roots deeply, and with relatively few superficial feeders, and the deeper the soil is worked the better.