PLANTING CASSAVA

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CASSAVA  is a root tuber crop very common in Nigeria. its starchy and contains carbohydrate.
it is usually eaten in many forms, it can be processed to garri which is used for swallow and soup,it can also be prepared and pounded to fufu which can also be swallowed .its very come with many homes in Nigeria as its part of the stable food eaten in Nigeria.
cassava can also be boiled and eaten with red oil however its a particular cassava which has reduced starch content.
cassava can also be processed to flour which can be used for bread and other baking activities, but however for the purpose of our study we are looking at the process of planting cassava so that we can learn how to plant cassava and achieve great results from the sales of the farm produce.

The first step to planting cassava is land preparation which begins with using tractor to prepare the land,or where tractor is not available bush clearing and chemical application as discoursed earlier .

Cassava is planted using cassava stems , however cassava used to produce seed but the results from planting this seed is not very encouraging as most times the seed will only produce stems without any tubers underneath.

These are Cassava stems which can be used for planting

This Cassava stems are usually arranged in bundles and about 30 bundles will be required to plant 1 hectare , But however this stems are not planted this long the are cut into 10inch sizes 

Cassava stems cut to 10 inch sizes ready for planting

once you have your farm land cleared and ready for your planting and you have cut the necessary cassava stems the next will be planting the stems .However their are methods of planting cassava stems but i will talk about two methods,they include burying the stem completely or burying the root part . i will explain this procedures with pictures.

for calculation on required bundle for cultivation the standard bundle requirement for one hectare is 30 bundles and remember that 1 hectare is 15 plots this explanation is necessary to aid calculation.

The above picture shows the burying type. In this the whole cut cassava stem is buried just as in the pictures above and the reason for this is normally during planting at early dry season when planted like that it keeps the stem from drying up when expose to very hot sun and dry weather.instead it grows with the little cool moisture temperature in the soil.Mostly this is done during early dry season of December and early January  planting time.

This is the second type of planting cassava stem where a part of the cassava is buried to the ground leaving the upper part.Firstly its not all the parts that are buried secondly if you bury the wrong part it will take longer time to germinate and some may even rotten once the wrong side is planted. some call the planted side leg while some call it the root side.

Now for you to identify the side that goes into the soil make sure its the part that is bigger in size , the smaller size will be up while the bigger portion will be in the soil 

The above pics is a newly planted cassava of less than 4 weeks old