A Pattaya gardener will be feeding friends and family for a while after her latest crop of cassava plants grew larger than she could imagine.
Chaweewan Bill, who grows vegetables in the backyard of her house on Soi Wat Boonkanjanaram 8, dug up a cassava tuber weighing in excess of 25 kilograms, about 150 percent larger than average for her garden. A helper also dug up two nearby tubers weighing 20 kg. and 15 kg.
Cassava plants typically each have five to 20 elongated tubers containing the starch tapioca. Each tuber may be 20-80 centimeters long and 5-10 cm. in diameter. The world average tuber weight is between 4-7 kg.
Chaweewan said she has been growing cassava for a year and recently had a worker dig them up to rotate her crops and plant bananas instead. However, the worker could not pull the tuber out of the ground as it was too heavy.
They dug for about five minutes to excavate the plant.
She said she’ll cook up the tapioca – which is used in such things as pudding, and also as a thickener in many recipes – and give some to her neighbors.
Chaweewan credited the large size of her crops to careful cultivation of her garden’s soil. She created her own fertilizer from vegetable and fruits waste and carefully waters the ground.
In line with HM the late King’s “sufficiency economy” philosophy, she grows vegetables to sustain her family and sell for extra income so she is not dependent on others.
