Low maintenance and Sustainable gardens are always a promising approach of home gardens. Gardens where we actually do not have to spend for seeds, raw material for propagation, which can easily be found from the kitchen baskets, are quite a win win for the grower. Mashed, fried, baked, boiled and baked, tubers are used all over in all kinds of cusines.
So why wait, start growing tubers in your own yard. There are a large number of tubers that we usually buy but we are unaware of their propagation methods. Let’s have a brief idea of some of the tubers which we can easily access and get them growing in our yards and farms also.
The Tubers could be listed out as Potato, Tapioca, Elephant Foot Yam, Dioscorea, Taro, Chinese Potato, and Sweet potato.
Potato:
If you have some potatoes that are beginning to sprout, plant a piece of the sprouting potato in the ground covered with 3 inches of soil. Within 2 weeks, green shoots should emerge. These will grow into bushy plants, and after 3 months or so, new potatoes will develop below ground.
Colocasia (Taro):
Colocasia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Araceae, native to southeastern Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Some species are widely cultivated and naturalized in other tropical and subtropical regions. When the mother plant has grown into a large clump, dig up and divide the tubers.
Chinese Potato:
The origin of Chinese Potato can be traced back to Central and East Africa, from where it came down to India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia. Chinese Potatoes are a staple food in tropical regions of India mainly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and the Konkan belt. It is a herb with creeping and aromatic leaves and succulent stems and they produce clusters of tubers at the base of the stems.
Sweet Potato:
Place the sweet potato in a container of water. Keep the top 1/3 of the potato exposed by placing toothpicks into the sides. The pointed end should be down in the water. In a few weeks, several stems will begin to sprout and cut the stems and put them to root in glass bottles and plant them out when roots are formed.
Tapioca:
Tapioca is propagated by stem cuttings. Mature stems are selected which are free from Stems are cut into setts of 15-20 cm in length using a sharp knife. Cut the setts 10 cm above the root and up to 30 cm below the immature end.
All tubers are rich in nutrients and have high medicinal values All you need is a sunny space to grow them, a steady supply of water
