A Brazillian Method of Preserving Cassava Canes Through A Frosty Winter

I received a comment on my recent cassava video with a link to a Brazilian method of keeping cassava planting material alive through frosts: 

I watched the video and found it quite interesting. In a mild climate, this looks like a great method of keeping cassava cuttings alive through winter:

If you don’t speak Portuguese, you can set the “auto-translate” on the video to English subtitles and get a better idea of what’s happening.

Keeping Cassava Cuttings Alive Through Winter (Brazilian edition)

In short:

1. Harvest your canes before frost destroys them
2. Find a storage area under a tree, facing East
3. Clean up the weeds a bit and make an area of loose soil
4. Press your long cassava cuttings right-side-up into the loose soil in a big bundle
5. Hill up a little more soil around them
6. Put a few more branches from something over the top of the cuttings to further protect them from and drying out.

I think that’s the whole story, as best as I can make it out.

We’ve had some issues with cassava canes rotting or drying out during the winter. This looks like a good happy medium. If I can find any more undamaged cassava canes in the old gardens after our recent frost, I will try using this method under one of our trees.

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