Greetings!
Something happened yesterday. It was in the afternoon while I was washing clothes. A neighbor walked to my garden and asked me if I had attempted to harvest my yam recently because there were some diggings around it, as if it was almost harvested. I told him, "No," and it was clear that thieves wanted to harvest it at night. I didn’t want to give them the chance, so I planned to harvest it later in the day.
I wanted the leaves to completely dry off because the yellow yam still had leaves, but since people were attempting to harvest it before me, it was better for me to harvest it and leave the bud there for it to form seedlings to be used for planting next season.
In case you don’t understand, leaving the head after harvest helps to get seedlings to be used in planting instead of using the main tuber. This is what we do on our farm at home, and it helps a lot. The process is simple: after the tuber of yam is seen in the ground while digging, the main tuber is cut off from the head, and that head is left in the ground for it to expand further.
So, I started digging. The yellow yam, which still had leaves on the plant, had just a small tuber. As I was digging, and because I wanted to leave the head, I made sure not to cut off all the roots. The ones cut off were only those done by mistake. When I got the full size of the tuber, I placed my cutlass at the head and disassembled the main tuber from the head.
The white yam was planted in the same spot, so I went on to dig it out. Its leaves had dried off some months ago, and I intentionally waited for it to stay longer in the ground to allow it to fully mature because I don’t like eating yams that are not fully matured. After I dug it out, it was the white yam that had the biggest harvest. I was amazed because I didn’t expect that. The heads of yam I planted were very small.
It’s a good harvest, considering the fact that I didn’t put much work in during the growth stage. The only work I did on a constant basis was twining the vines because they were springing up rapidly. I only had to clear grass once, and that was after a month of planting because it rained every day. I didn’t do much watering.
The bud I left—I hope it expands well, and I’ll get to harvest it when the leaves have dried off completely. I will keep it off the soil for some weeks before planting it back.
Thanks for reading.
Photos are mine