Taro harvest - Eat local challenge

Eat Local Challenge start this Sunday.  It was a good timing so we decide to harvest 2 rows of taro, perhaps 20lb or so.  There are some big ones and small ones.  They are all good cooked together in pressure cooker with peel on.  Once they are cooked, they peel real easy.  We harvest taro once or twice a month so not so much different from our ordinary routine of harvesting.  Taro doesn't store very well, but they store well in the landscape.
Natural farming crops are supposed to store well in ordinary storage condition so maybe i'm not doing something right.  Taro also contains much water, so likely to rot, but cold storage may improve.  Typically my grandmother was storing her taro in cool, but not freezing condition to keep it alive and keep it from sprouting until spring.  If I can get enough refrigerator space, it may store well.



Photos show our harvest of taro.  Not too bad for using no fertilizer at all.  Natural farming taro (or any other vegetables) are extremely efficient.  This is one thing I notice throughout in natural farming crops.  because they are not provided with luxurious load of fertilizers and amendment, they adapt their natural nutrient cycle and local environment.  and the resulting plant proportion is small and symmetrical leaf shap, yet large corm in proportion.  sometimes even surprises me with such small leaves with decent size corm. 


Another way of looking at this is that taro carry no excess weight from overeating.  One thing I noticed was that the taro had weak root system.  Not very thick, I should say, not too thick since there was reasonable amount of root holding up the plant and perhaps enough to get the plants' nutrient functions going.  Perhaps it's part of natural farming plant efficiency to use least amount of energy to produce the most.

In the end, taro doesn't need large leaves or too many leaves.  If their leaves are small, they can be planted denser together and still have good per unit area yield.  Perhaps I need a comparison study to test standard yield.  I planted about 1-2 ft apart, but felt it was too far apart and letting too much light through.



She is supposed to be our tea farm intern, but harvesting and separating taro and huli for next planting.  Taro is pretty simple to manage.  I don't think we do anything more than plant, weed and harvest.

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