Cashewnut Trees - Anyone Growing Them?

[anthoma]

I tried to search the forum for Cashewnuts, but i cannot find anything.

Here were i live in south Ubon there are cashewnuttrees everywere. So 4 years ago we bougth 20 rai of land and after advice from my GF we put about 5-600 cashewnuttrees there. Last year we startet to get some cashewnuts, about 50 kg and the price was 33 bath pr. kilo. This year we dont know because the harvest starts in february/mars.

Now lokal farmers starts to cut down their cashewnuttrees and put cassava instead.

Anybody have any excperience with cashewnuts. How many trees, how old, how much harvest you get, and how do you take care of your trees?

[pnustedt]

I hope that this "word" document is helpful to you: cashewnuts_1.doc

I planted a couple of rai to cashews last year and most of them are now in blossom. At the moment they we have cassava between the rows of trees but the price for cassava is very low at the moment.

[anthoma]

Thanks for the link Pnustedt. Interessting reading. According to this you can excpect an annual yield pr. tree (mature 7 years up) about 7-11 kg pr. tree. With 600 trees i can, if i'm lucky, excpect from 4200 - 6600 kg pr. year. With todays prices about 33 bath pr. kilo would give us a income of 140 000 bath up. Not bad compare with what we are making on the rice and the cassava these days. And with cashewnuts we can do most of the work ourselves. With rice and cassava we have big expences on labour and tractor so income from cashewnuts will almost be net profit minus expences for the fertilizer.

Well we just have to wait and see. The trees are only 4 years so we dont expect to much yet.

Since the trees still small we also put cassava in between.

[thescot]

When you planted did you plant from seeds or did you plant from pre grown and what were the costs. Thanks.

[pnustedt]

When you planted did you plant from seeds or did you plant from pre grown and what were the costs. Thanks.

We bought layered plants from Sisaket Agricultural College, I think they were Bt18 each, about 18in. high.

[loong]

Isn't harvesting cashewnuts very labour intensive? Also advise wear gloves.

I was told that the fruit( or cashew apple) is inedible as irritates the mouth. I was told this after I had tried it, but didn't really notice anything. Shame, I thought as the fruit is very nice.

As far as I understand the nut has the poisonous irritant in the outer layers and the fruit is quite edible. Makes good juice and wine. The Brazilians love it. The fruit is fragile and so cannot be transported to market, so is discarded usually.