Oca

[wingnut]

Richard the plain yellow did not make it, probably due to my lack of knowledge combined with unbridled enthusiasm..... I have only harvested one of the 'ROSE' variety that I forced with a 12 hr rest in my shop each night. I got 39 pin-pong ball to marble sized from one 8" squat pot. The plants I have in the garden are now covered with plastic hoop house, with marble sized tubers; which I hope to keep frost free till the end of November. I also have about 25 8'" squat pots with many marble sized tubers showing.
The pink, red, and yellow w/ red eyes from you are indoors under lights. They will be potted up to 3 gallon pots this week then turned back to 10 hrs light per day to initiate tuber formation. That should give me a sizable number of tubers to plant out in May.

[Medbury Gardens]

Shame the plain yellow one didn't make it ,i can always send it again to you if you like.
So have you had frost already?

[wingnut]

I was really bummed when it succumbed, but feel pretty blessed to have six varieties of oca when this spring I had none. I am not sure even what went wrong, it looked fine one day squishy the next. probably to damp I guess.

[Medbury Gardens]

Yer i could see why it may have succumbed as its not the strongest grower and the tubers are smaller than the other colours

[Iva]

I'm still waiting for my oca crop. This is the second year growing oca for me and I just can't wait to see what's hiding under ground...

Last year, I started very late so I just put them in pots where I grew tomatoes and they did fairly well. Well enough to give me planting material for this year that is. I also managed to try some. I ate them mostly fresh as the are really refreshing and crunchy...

This year, I planted them all over the garden (in between tomatoes) and in a special bed they shared with yacon. Those did great as far as growth goes. Some had stems that reached over 1,2m! I hope frost won't come in all it's might soon. We did have a hard enough frost to kill of the yacon tops but I did cover the oca then and it remained covered since...

This is what it looked like in the bed with yacons (on the left):


This is the longest plant, the stems are very thick, I hope this plant will give me huge ocas:


Here they are covered, waiting for the tuberization:


And this is a preview of things to come

[Medbury Gardens]

Well done Iva,
last growing season i tried using clear plastic over my Oca crop as the days got shorter&colder and found the tubers grow much much better in the warmth that it creates,i would recommended doing that Iva because if you can keep yours alive till the end of Nov you'll get a much bigger crop




The harvested crop in the first month of winter

[Medbury Gardens]

Doug- these are some of the fasciated tubers i got,do you ever get them like this

[Iva]

Thank you so much for the comments and suggestions, Richard! If my crop is successful I would really love to trade some tubers! Yours look great and I have six or eight different types...
One of them likes fasciating as much as yours does, only my soil won't let them get that big...
I have to amend my soil a bit more next year so the tubers can develop better...

BTW. that is a great crop you have there!!! How many tubers did you plant to get such a crop??

[Medbury Gardens]

I plant one tuber,three wide and the bed is one meter across,so with each colour i plant nine tubers of the very biggest which have to come from the strongest,best producing plant from the year before

[wingnut]

Some developmental pics!Showing a number of stolons in various stages of development.and a few a little farther along.

[Medbury Gardens]

Doing alright hey considering its still early in the tuber development stage yet,have you had a frost yet Doug ??.

Hard case seeing the same weeds in your garden that i get here