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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-266
Cassava
Manihot esculenta
Cassava's starchy root is a staple food across the tropics - fried, boiled, or milled into flour - and the young leaves cook up as a vegetable that supplies the protein the root lacks. Both parts contain cyanide-forming compounds and are never eaten raw: sweet varieties need only a short simmer, while bitter types require a day-long soak and long cooking. Grown somewhere with real winter frost, it has to be treated as an annual - the top dies at the first freeze and the root does not overwinter, so cuttings get replanted every spring from stock kept frost-free over winter. Its leaves also make an outstanding livestock feed, once wilted, dried or ensiled to drive off the cyanide, rivaling good alfalfa for protein.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 10–12
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moderate · Moist
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 5.5–8
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 6–10 ft
- Mature spread
- 6–10 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3–4 ft
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- None
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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