BURIED TREASURE

A ROOT VEGETABLE THAT TAKES UP TO EIGHT MONTHS UNDERGROUND TO FORM A GOOD-SIZED TUBER, KUMARA IS TOTALLY WORTH THE WAIT

Words Jennifer Stackhouse

Years ago, Australians ate sweet potato. It was commonly a whitish-grey, sweetly flavoured vegetable served roasted with pumpkin, carrot, parsnip and potato. Then a chunky orange vegetable arrived with the catchy name of kumara. Move over, sweet potato. Although kumara is just a more colourful form of sweet potato, it gave the vegetable an unexpected cachet. Kumara is the Maori name for sweet potato but the tuber isn’t native to New Zealand. Indeed, although widely grown through the Pacific region, kumara (or sweet potato) spread from Central and South America to Oceania more than 1000 years ago. New varieties arrived in New Zealand in the 1840s, possibly on whaling ships that travelled to southern waters from America and Europe. These were larger tubers than traditional Maori crops, with darker red-and-gold colouration. A variety sold as…

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Good Organic Gardening (Digital) - 1 Issue, 15.3

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