Greetings!
My yam, which is one of the surviving plants in my little garden, has been doing well. I had a stick on it, which serves as a stake to help it grow well and not spread on the ground, and of course, that's how yams are grown.
Some days back, I got there and saw the vines scattered, and having good knowledge of farming, I didn't hesitate to twine the vines on the stick to help in healthy growth. If those vines are left like that, they'll swing off so badly, falling to the ground when they become so long. By then, they'll be left with no option but to fall to the ground, and their mouth will become so pale and shrink after a while. So, yeah, that's what I did in my latest work there, twining the vines to avoid such problems.
Usually, the twining is supposed to be in an anticlockwise direction on the stick, but because the stick isn't long enough, I had to twine some in the opposite direction. Also, I had to draw some of them, the ones that were shooting up above the stick, downwards, and tie them with little spines of grasses in the area where the branches are full enough. Oh yeah, it's better they expand in a particular area than to allow them to spring up to the clouds above the stick, where they'll eventually fall down when they're too long to hold up, and they'll get broken.
The importance of twining yam vines cannot be overemphasized. It's one of the major care tasks of a yam plant, and if not done, the yam may not develop as well as it ought to. Way back when I was at home living with my parents, we usually had a big farm space for yams, and my dad would spend a full day in the farm doing this kind of work. We used to call it a lazy man's work because the task looks simple, but hey, it's not simple, especially when the staking is so high, and a long stick is used to twine the vines. It becomes worse when those vines are stubborn and resist being twisted where they're supposed to be. Sometimes, we would see my dad on a yam stand for 20 minutes struggling to wrap the vines around where they're supposed to be with the stick. Sometimes, he would lower his head to take a rest because his neck was tired of being stretched. He would rest his head a little before raising it up again to continue the battle. This is one of the reasons I decided to use a low stick for my staking. I don't want to experience the difficulties of raising my head up for minutes struggling to twine the vines. With what I have here, I can easily use my hand to hold them and tie them in the direction I want with ease.
Thanks for reading.
The photos are mine