In my last post I posted a few pictures of a cassava I harvested. In other parts of the world it may be known as manioc. It is a tuber root that is used for a number of things. It can be processed into starch for use in many things, it can be ground into a course powder called gari, it can be ground into flour, it can be fried and made into fries, and it can be pounded with plantain to make fufu.
Here is what a mature plant looks like it is a large shrub I grew it on my swale berm with some of the other perennials like my pawpaws.
I first started out by cutting down the branches. These can be stripped of leaves and cut into shorter sections and stuck in the ground again to propagate them into new plants.
I first used the hoe to clear around the base of the cassava as much as possible. When I started running into the tubers though I switched to a pitch fork to help loosen the soil and diminish my changes of hitting a root.
Before long it is possible to start identifying some of the tubers.
With a lot of digging and prying I finally got the tubers out of the ground.
Here it is completely out of the ground.
I am left with a large crater that then needs to be filled in.
The hole all filled in.
After filling it in I will put one of the stems back in the soil. In no time it will look like this which I harvested one here and replaced the stem about a month ago.
All pictures were taken with my Google Pixel 3xl camera phone.