Ragged Technology: Planting Cassava and Yams
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Transcription
Infomation
Description
In this video I build a garden to grow Cassava and yams, two staple food crops. Cassava is a shrub that develops large edible roots. Yams are a climbing vine that produce large, edible underground bulbs and smaller aerial bulbs on their vines.
I had 5 huts, but the wattle and daub hut (from the first video uploaded on this channel nearly 2 years ago) became dilapidated. I abandoned it in favour of the other huts I built and neglected the roof. This let water in destroying a wall. Also, the sweet potato patch behind it had a tree fall across it destroying the fence. So I demolished them both to make one large garden.
After removing the fence I set a fire under the fallen tree to burn it in half rather than spend the effort of cutting it with stone tools. After burning almost all the way through, it rained. So I came back later and cut through the rest of the log with stone tools. I eventually broke the tree in half. Using smaller logs as levers I moved the tree out of the garden clearing the space for the garden.
I then collected wood and built a simple fence that was woven loosely together with vine. The fence needs only to discourage large animals from entering to prevent them causing damage. Most times pigs and wallabies don’t know that food is growing in the garden and won’t try and enter if they see no reason to. Or at least that worked for the sweet potatoes so we’ll see if it works this time.
For the yam and cassava planting material I travelled far down stream to the site of my old stone hut that I built over 10 years ago. It had a corbelled dome roof that was damaged when a tree fell on it during a cyclone and it came down a few months later. The thick walls however have stayed standing for about a decade though.
Yams and cassava grew wild at this site which is one of the reasons I built the stone hut there. These plants are not native to Australia but grow wild here after having escaped from people’s gardens (similar to how wild pigs live here now after escaping from farms). The planting material for the yams are the bulbs that grow on the vines. The planting material for cassava are simply 25 cm long pieces of stem.
On returning to the garden, a scrub turkey was seen digging in the mounds. Protected by law, this bird has lost its fear of humans and in this case I’ve semi-domesticated it. Originally it was attracted to soil I dug up for the worms it exposed. I started leaving a pot out with small sweet potatoes in it for it to eat and now it investigates any pottery I leave for food. Now it visits my projects and will only leave if bored or chased away. I suppose this is similar to how chickens were domesticated, in fact bush turkeys and chickens are related and will produce hybrid offspring.
Unfortunately, it has learned that the garden contains food. Originally, I was only going to plant yams but I saw the turkey digging them up and eating them. So, I planted cassava in the mounds so that the turkey would be discouraged by finding only wooden stems to peck at. I secretly planted the yams along the fence of the garden because the turkey only thinks the mounds contain yams. They can’t smell very well and only find food by sight and learned behavior.
I planted the cassava in mounds 1 meter apart by pushing them flat into the soil. I planted the yams at intervals along the fence so they could use it as a trellis. 32 cassava stems and 12 yams were planted. Then a storm began and watered the garden. In less than a week the cassava had sprouted shoots and began to grow. The yams will take longer as I planted them deeper.
Cassava produces the most calories per time and space of any plant apart from sugar cane and sugar beet. But it requires much less fertiliser and effort. A hectare of cassava produces enough calories in 2 days to sustain a person for 1 year. It takes a year to come to harvest but will stay in the ground for a year without becoming woody. The tubers are high in starch and are what tapioca is made from.
This variety is called sweet cassava (actually not bitter cassava, it doesn’t taste sweet but starchy instead) and it needs to be boiled for 20 minutes to get rid of some cyanide it contains. The bitter variety contains such high levels that it kills if eaten raw and requires more extensive treatment to eat. There isn’t much nutrition in cassava other than the large amount calories it contains so other food would be required to provide protein and nutrients.
After I harvest the cassava I planted I’ll try fermenting it (which adds nutrition), drying it and pounding it into flour to make flat bread. Cassava flour has the same energy content as wheat flour, stores well and tastes somewhat similar. Or I could just cook it and eat it straight from the garden. I’ll use the yams like potatoes when they’re ready.
Transcription
Grass hut Bed shed Barrel tiled shed Tiled hut Wattle and daub hut After being abandoned in favor of the other huts, the roof deteriorated and the walls damaged by rain A tree fell and destroyed the sweet potato patch Setting fire to tree Scraping away charred wood.
Chopping the rest with stone tools Using a log as a type 2 lever to shift tree logs as slide rails Wood for fence pickets Hammering pickets Weaving together with vine Digging mounds 32 mounds My stone hut, far down stream, 10 years earlier damaged by a tree in a cyclone.
The ruins of the hut today Wild yams grow over it now Aerial bulbs make good planting material Wild cassava, escaped from early farms in the area The stems are used for planting material It produces large, edible tubers high in energy Protected by law, scrub turkeys have lost their fear of humans. It will only leave if chased away 25 cm lengths of cassava stems.
Planted horizontally in mounds Yam bulbs were also planted along the fence so that the vine could climb on it Thunderstorm rain brings nitrogen due to lightning In less than a week the cassava sprouts It will require little attention after planting and will be harvested at the end of the year
Infomation
Author: Author Link: Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ4KNMnTsIs Category: Channel Name: Primitive Technology Channel ID: 22 Tags: primitive,planting,cassava,
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7 thoughts on “Ragged Technology: Planting Cassava and Yams”
I if truth be told have a inquire of, what's the yams?
5 years later and it's soundless equally as frosty to search
5:00 Spangled Drongo sounds esteem a robot
Very frosty BTW. Any strategy of revealing us what particular items your working with? Enjoy roots, plant life, wood, tools and different kinds. Maybe some more subtitles for more info would be AWESOME!!
Fine collab man; must take into accounta good meal
I never imagined hearth may well perhaps also very neatly be feeble to slash a tree.
Are you able to develop a video about that stone hut in the end?