"echinosum" wrote in message
...
;902987 Wrote:
They're true tropical plants. With CONSIDERABLE care, and growing
them under protection, some people have got a crop. Otherwise,
don't bother.
Tropical in origin, but are grown very successfully in temperate
climates with a long warm summer. They are grown in Spain and Italy,
and grow well even in northern parts such as Catalunya and Veneto. They
were a staple for the Maori of New Zealand. In the US they are
cultivated commercially in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina (the
main producer), as well as the gulf coast states.
So we aren't too many hundred of miles north of good growing areas. But
basically the problem in Britain is that the growing season normally
just isn't warm for long enough for outdoor growing to have much chance
of success. Better chance in a greenhouse.
The history of the plants is very interesting. They were cultivated
from about 2500BC in central and southern America, and from about
700-1000AD in the Pacific Islands, including New Zealand. It was also
grown in highland New Guinea before European contact, though possibly
from more recent times. But the Philippines knew it not before European
contact. The name for them is more or less the same - kumara or some
variant - in Quechua (main Peruvian language), Nahuatl (main Mexican
language) and Polynesian languages (including Maori), who all cultivated
it before European contact. So there is some quite strong indication of
Polynesian - South American contact. Although there is some very rare
native sweet potato in Polynesia, it is not the same species as South
America, and the Polynesians cultivated the South American version, via
cuttings.
The Maori trained seagulls to pick bugs off the leaves, would you
believe it.
What a fascinating post! Thank you for the information.
We found kumaras for sale in South Island, N.Z. in a supermarket. They had
a dark purple skin and white flesh, not at all like what we get here. I
think they were like sweet potatoes, not yams.
Seems to me there are a) sweet potatoes (brown skin, white flesh) and b)
yams, brown or purple skin, orange flesh). One is called a yam, the other
is a sweet potato. In Canada, the yam is the orange-fleshed one, grown in
the U.S. We don't have the white dry one except in Caribbean food shops.
The white-fleshed ones are very dry and starchy, and not terribly tasty.
They're used as a carbohydrate staple in the Caribbean. The orange-fleshed
ones are more watery and tasty and cook up a treat when baked with butter &
brown sugar. More like winter squashes.
What about all those other things - Apios americana, for example. I'm
growing them and I would not be able to expect to live off them for more
than a day or so.
Asian food markets have a treasure-trove of things one can plant.
someone