Question: What are some other perennial, long-lived plants that we can grow for our food future? Gardening has been such a great accomplishment for our ohana, and now a mind occupier as we safely hunker down and quarantine.
I know we’re all a bit happier and more content by getting outside and digging in the “lepo” (soil). Tending our plants, and watching and waiting for plants to grow and produce has been a valuable life lesson for us. Mahalo. — QJK, Ewa Beach
Answer: Cassava is good plant to grow. Let’s learn more about it and “grow” for it!
This is an easy perennial plant to grow. If you prepare the planting area with leafy compost and get rid of weeds and grass first, it’s a good place holder plant that can keep weeds at bay. As it grows, it shades out and prevents many weeds from growing in its shadow.
It has many names in Hawaii, including manioc, tapioca, manioka and pia manioka. In other places, you might hear it called yuca, macaxeira, mandioca, aipim and agbeli. The scientific name is Manihot esculenta. It is a woody shrub native to South America, in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. It is widely grown in the Pacific Islands.
Cassava is a root crop and it takes a while to mature.
The leaves are dark green with red highlights. They are shaped kind of like a hand with long pointy fingers; the stalk is kind of knobby. It is a shrub with multiple stalks coming up from the roots. It can grow 4 to 6 feet tall, or taller if it’s shady or if the soil is really rich and fertile.
It used to be that wherever I worked — Foster Botanical Garden, Ho‘omaluhia Botanical Garden, Hale Koa Hotel and Honolulu Zoo — the crew had a side garden, tucked back into an unused space, and they grew cassava.
Growing at home
Recently, I was taking a socially distant stroll with my neighbor Jennifer Wong. We checked out a nearby yard that our friend recently moved out of to see if there were any valuable plants of his we might salvage. There were some beautiful cassava plants that we could get propagules from.
Cassava plants are grown from big cuttings. Cut them a foot or two long, with a diameter of an inch or larger. Poke them straight into well prepared soil, or plant them sideways. Using a mound of good soil is another nice method. Make sure to clear any grass before planting. Water well after planting, and continue to water daily to get your cassava plants established. You should be able to harvest it in about eight months.
It’s a pretty plant to grow and you can design a nice garden space with the shrubby cassava. Some good candidates to interplant with cassava include banana, ape, kalo, sweet potato, chaya, collard greens, basil, mint, chives, tomatoes and more.
You can also interplant cassava with other garden ornamentals or even grow it in a big pot.
Edible roots
In order to eat cassava, you need to cook it.
Did you know that tapioca comes from the cassava plant? Tapioca starch is extracted from cassava roots.
I asked my neighbor Bernice Arcenas Parsons, who grew up in Manila, how it is prepared there. One popular way is cassava cake, it’s something like mochi. We talked about how they made black tapioca pearls for boba bubble drinks in the Philippines. It involves a lot of labor: The tapioca starch is mixed with a special kind of sugar called muscovado.
A simple cooking method is to slice the long root into 4-inch pieces, slice off the bark and boil until fork tender. Then saute it with onions and garlic, cumin seeds and powder, some red chile flakes and salt. Finish it off with lemon zest and lemon juice.
Cassava is a good source of potassium, vitamin C, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin. The leaves, which are also edible if they are cooked or dried in the sun, can contain up to 25% protein.
Tapioca starch is also known as a gluten-free flour to use in making bread and other baked products suitable for people with gluten intolerance.
Cassava is a source of resistant starch, which studies suggest can boost a person’s gut health by helping nurture beneficial gut bacteria.
Resistant starches remain relatively unchanged as they pass through the digestive tract. (Breadfruit, or ulu, is also a source of resistant starch.)
Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable landscape consultant specializing in native, xeric and edible gardens. Reach her at heidibornhorst@gmail.com.
