Today I share how to propagate yams the easy way - from minisetts.
Read more on growing yams as a staple survival crop here: http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/how-to-grow-yams/
See the CARDICaribbean video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3LWs6rhf7Y
Though I pick on the method in that video because I'm not a fan of soaking yams in pesticides or herbicides, it's a fine presentation with good information otherwise.
To propagate yams from minisetts, get a fresh yam, cut it into pieces while ensuring you have a good piece of skin on each one from which the new growth will emerge. Dip the cut pieces in ashes, let them dry a bit, then plant them in loose soil. You can plant yams in a big pot or a bed if you want to ensure you only get ones that will sprout in your gardens, if you like. When the fines start popping out from the ground, transfer your yams to where you would like them to grow - and don't wait long - the vines will grow fast and become a big tangle if you don't act quickly.
Ensure each yam has a solid stick they can climb. Shoot for 6-7' tall poles or ever larger. Alternately, yams can be grown on fences or on trees.
Yam bulbils will also work for planting if you have access to them; however, not all Dioscorea species will make bulbils. Sometimes it's just easier to start with big roots and cut them up into minisetts. With the potato yam, just use entire roots from the cluster without cutting them into pieces, as that is supposed to work better.
Good luck!
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Sweet Potato vs. Yams rap battle lyrics:
Yo, this is Dioscorea SPP on the mic…
...and I’m Ippo-me-uh Batatas, fool, live in the studio, dropping the beats yo
People got a lot of confusion about us, mixing up what we is and isn’t.
And we are both sick it it – so today we gonna set it straight.
Ippo-me-uh batatas, I got a lotta, people calling me a yam but that’s a scam of marketers in the past who flubbed the task of proper classification to sell us across the nation of the USA so now when they say yam they think of orange roots in a can not the monocot that got kicked to the curb, it’s absurd to call me a yam, Uncle Sam we ain’t even close to the same species, so let me unleash these, ryhmes in time to let you know the real difference between my sweet roots and the climbing vines and shoots of my friend the yam, kick it on the mic man!
Yo I’m Dioscorea, not gonna bore ya, with brags on my pedigree or history as a staple cross the world, boys and girls, live on my carb rich roots shout out to Africa, where they laugh at ya, for even suggesting that a sweet orange thing might be a yam like claiming that a hippo is a lamb, it’s crazy, ya’ll have gotten hazy, about the meaning of words or the taxonomy of roots, the adman loots, familiar terms and makes them mean what they’re not, what you got, with a true yam is a vine that’s a monocot, growing up, tree trunks and fences and anything else we can grip, we don’t slip, as we reach for the sunlight shining high about the canopy, it’s clear to see that a sweet potato creeps on the ground and roots and shoots only a few inches high as it vines around so listen to the sound of staple crop reality… and drop the beat.
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