Description
Heritage Status: Unknown
Bio-Region of Origin: Unknown
Quantity: 15 tupu
Description: Pale coloured skin with streaky bluey-purple flesh. When cooked the flesh looks very blue and is firm with a good flavour.
View our Koanga Perennial Crop Selection Chart
To help you decide which varieties will be best for you.
Creating A Perennial Garden Bed
This excerpt from the Koanga Garden Guide is filled with valuable information.
Planting Instructions: Kumara need light/ sandy soils (Maori carried sand long distances to improve heavy soils) with a hard pan about a foot under the surface. We plant our kumara in beds that are about 1 metre wide. We shape the bed so a mound runs length ways along it. We then plant the kumara in two rows one on each side of the mound at a spacing of about 12 inches along each row. We stagger them so that the tupu on one side are positioned opposite the middle of the space between two on the other side. Bend the roots of the tupu under into a J -shape when planting so the roots face up to the top again under the ridge of soil, facing east or, in some traditions, north. Traditional additions to the soil were baked ground shell, seaweed, and woodash. We also use compost and Nature’s Garden fertiliser.
