The sweet smell of chocolate in the garden

Just a quick post about cocoa bean mulch (cocoa shells) which in a strange way connects my work (chocolate) and my favorite hobby (gardening). First of all it benefits a garden greatly if the soil around plants is covered with a mulch of some kind. I think of mulches as being organic material such as ground up leaves, compost, manure, shredded bark, grass clippings or my favorite cocoa shells. Peat is not a good mulch because it repels water when it is dry so if you must use peat mix it into your soil as a conditioner. I don’t use peat at all myself because it has no nutrients for the plants. We’ll talk about good conditioners for the soil another time.

Generally mulches are applied in the spring and/or the fall. Just spread the mulch of your choice around the plants and try not to leave mulch touching the plants where the stems come out of the ground (the crown). A mulch piled on the crown of a plant could cause the stem to rot.

A mulch will help the garden and the gardener in so many ways! It will help keep weeds from sprouting, add nutrients to the soil as the mulch breaks down, regulate the soil temperature and hold in moisture around the plants. It can be attractive and a mulched garden will often suffer less from pests and diseases. I consider it essential to put some sort of organic mulch on my garden at least once a year.

Ok, back to cocoa shells and why I often use them to mulch my garden. I discovered cocoa shells 20 years ago when I first started gardening and I was amused when they left the smell of chocolate in the garden! The first thing I was told was “Don’t use those, they’ll all blow away in the wind!”. I countered that problem by watering them as soon as they were spread or better yet I sometimes try to spread them just before a rain to save myself the trouble of watering. After several waterings they seem to lock together which really keeps them in place.

Cocoa shells can get a white mold when damp especially when spread too thick so don’t spread much more than an inch to an inch and a half. If the mold bothers you it can be washed away by watering or by rain, it can be raked under or it can just be ignored (my choice). I’ve never minded it because in my garden it never lasts long and it doesn’t cause any harm to the plants.

Also, a word of caution to pet owners is in order because dogs that eat the cocoa shells can get sick or even die. If you have dogs in the yard that might eat the cocoa shells there are plenty of other good mulches that you can use. It’s best to be safe!

In the new flower bed at the bottom of the picture you can see cocoa mulch. My nephew is helping me by spreading cedar mulch on the pathways.

I’ve been excited to discover that in my garden cocoa shells discourage slugs and snails! They don’t like the texture so I especially like to spread cocoa shells around my hostas. Some other advantages of cocoa shells are that they contain beneficial nutrients for the soil, they are easy to disperse, they are attractive in appearance even keeping their dark color and best of all using this manufacturing by-product is an environmentally responsible practice.

I love the smell of chocolate! During summers gardening or winters working in the candy store I never get tired of it.