Although this was a cashew nut region, the plant was difficult to nurture. The young age was the most difficult. It grew very slowly and stagnated at times. In fact we were informed that the big cashew nut trees we were seeing around that were productive had been in existence for a very, very long time, that is over a century.
Some of the old men and women we saw around saw the trees more or less the same way as children growing up. They had the same type of difficulty as the coconut seedlings and some of the citrus fruit seedlings. The area being stony made the roots find it difficult to penetrate deeper for better survival and that is why the seedlings were slow in development and some died.
We struggled all the same to have at least a few trees at the farm. When they did well we smiled and when they did badly we sulked, but that is the nature of farming. We had five seedlings on the ground.
We weeded around them often and applied manure and water but that still did not help them much.
Unfortunately, like coconuts, we never tasted the nuts because they had a long way to go to fruition.
This was a region dominated by cashew nuts.