The Tropical Fruit Forum

Everything Else => Tropical Vegetables and Other Edibles => Topic started by: pineislander on February 10, 2019, 06:57:34 PM

Title: Dioscorea yam harvest 2019
Post by: pineislander on February 10, 2019, 06:57:34 PM
I've harvested the following yams this past week:
Purple Dioscorea alata
Yellow yam Dioscorea cayenensis
Cush-Cush yam Dioscorea trifida.
These were planted about 10 months ago in SW Florida on raised beds between mango trees and among other plants. I ran them up teepee style trellises of string about 8 feet tall. They had sprinkler irrigation but eventually the foliage became too thick for it to penetrate.
A month before harvest I stripped as many bulbils off as possible. Only the purple alata made bulbils but two trellises 10 feet long made 25 lbs of very nice bulbils which I sold. At the final harvest I got one 5 gallon bucket nearly full of bulbils and over 100 lbs of yams, some of which were over 10 lbs each. The D. cayenensis made very good quality yellow fleshed roots but no bulbils. The D. trifida yield was a bit disappointing, few tubers were as large as those originally planted, but counting all the smaller tubers the yield was about 5 times the mass of planting material. I think the trifida needs exceptional soil and moisture to perform well. In the position these grew there was some strong competition with a fast growing tree. I understand that in Costa Rica at small scale these are planted in bags of compost and set next to trees as trellis,
(https://i.postimg.cc/kDHp8z13/DSC01560.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/kDHp8z13)

(https://i.postimg.cc/dDZBM1Bp/DSC01561.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/dDZBM1Bp)

(https://i.postimg.cc/K10L3Sft/DSC01564.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/K10L3Sft)

Purple alata in rear, D. Cayenensis front left, D. trifida front right
(https://i.postimg.cc/CBkzNWGP/DSC01565.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/CBkzNWGP)