yacon

habitat_gardener · November 29, 2009

I started answering a question about yacon, Bolivian sunroot, in another thread and got so long-winded that I decided I'd better move the discussion to its own thread.

To recap, I've been growing this sweet, crunchy edible tuber for several years. I harvest it around January most years. I get huge tubers as well as lots of propagules. I like to eat them raw, but I've read you can also cook them. (I've read the leaves are edible, but I tried them once and found them very bitter.)

The question was, when did I plant and when do I harvest.

Usually I plant around April or May, when the tubers start sprouting, if I've stored them correctly. I've found the propagules can be kept indefinitely in small pots, but of course they won't produce much if the roots don't have room to spread. I recently found my extra propagules that I'd stored in sand almost a year ago, which I harvested with the January 2009 crop.

For this year's crop, in early 2008 I planted the propagules in 6-inch pots, gave away the ones that had sprouted leaves by the time of the late-April plant exchange, and in summer or fall 2008 planted the leftovers around the garden because I'd read they're good for the soil. They didn't get a foot high by the time cold weather hit, so I left them in place. The big one has been in the ground since probably late spring 2008, but it didn't start producing new foliage this year until April or May. (We have cold snaps as late as mid-April that could freeze exposed foliage.) It has only started flowering in the past month. I have a few others that survived -- a couple in part shade that are only 3 ft. high (where I used to grow the ones that reached 6-7 ft. each year -- maybe not enough water this year?), and one in poorer soil that's been neglected and is under a foot high.

I start harvesting sometime after the flowers have faded and the leaves have turned black from the cold, and when I don't have a lot of other things going on in the garden. I've read that yacon can be harvested one tuber at a time, but I found when I start digging, pieces break off and it's easier to do the whole excavation at once. I also read that curing them in the sun for a few days makes them sweeter -- haven't tried that, will have to try it this year if it's not freezing cold.

Mt.Imagine · November 29, 2009

Good post HG. This was my first year planting yacon and I didn't get as big a yield as I could have, so I'm trying to examine all the possible factors, including leaving them in the ground longer. I cured them in the sun, and they tasted incredible! From reading your description, it sounds like the ones you planted in the ground at a time other than aprilish didn't do well? Do you think that is because of the cold where you are, or that it is generally better not to leave the plants in the ground all year?

habitat_gardener · November 29, 2009

When did you plant yours? Are you growing a few plants, or a whole bunch?

I think it's ok to leave them in the ground all year, but with cold snaps in mid April, the foliage keeps dying back if it emerges earlier. I dug up any plants that had grown at least 2 ft. high to harvest the tubers and divide the propagules, so anything left in the ground was quite small. Also, for anyone in a climate colder than northern Calif., they should not be left in the ground if there's any chance the ground will freeze, and they seem to need a 6-8 month frost-free growing season.

The limiting factor seems to be water and good rich soil. For the 5 or so years I've been growing them, the plants that get regular water and are in soil with lots of compost have done best. I water by hand, so "regular water" is every 2-5 days (more frequent in warmer weather), and I give them a lot more water than any of the other plants. I add compost to most of my garden beds a few times a year, and the yacon plants that did best were the ones that got the most compost.

This year my biggest plant happened to be in the middle of my tomato bed, so I probably sacrificed some KB tomatoes, but on the other hand, that area got a lot more water than usual, so I probably got more Fox cherry and Dagma's Perfection tomatoes than I would have. I still have a big green Caspian Pink hanging on under the shelter of the huge yacon leaves, too.

Mt.Imagine · November 30, 2009

I ordered three plants last year, just enough to try them, and planted them in April. What you say about water and soil fertility seem to be true; I also think I spaced them too close together last year. Thanks for answering; I might replant them long before April this time, but I think I'll leave them in storage for now.

mensplace · December 4, 2009

And I thought I knew something about veggies. WHERE does one obtain starter tubers. Read about it on Wiki and it sounds fascinating. Also learned that JICAMA is grown from seed, but found a source for those!

b54red · December 13, 2009

Never even heard of them. Can you describe the taste?
I have a long enough growing season if they like it hot and humid.

habitat_gardener · December 19, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by mensplace

And I thought I knew something about veggies. WHERE does one obtain starter tubers. Read about it on Wiki and it sounds fascinating.

I got mine from another gardener. I think a lot of it gets passed around from one person to another. Each year, after harvesting the edible tubers, you get a lot of (separate) propagules that can be cut into many pieces -- it's not like potatoes or garlic, where you plant the edible part. I'd be happy to share some propagules, but I need to figure out how to send them economically -- probably by parcel post, but then I'd also need to find some small boxes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b54red

Can you describe the taste?

I dug up some of the small plants yesterday and was surprised to get 2 huge tubers, probably over a pound each, as well as a bunch of smaller ones. I tasted the smaller ones -- haven't left them out in the sun to develop more sweetness, so these were not so sweet -- and would describe it as a very crunchy carrotlike taste, with earthiness and a hint of sweetness and a little resinous note. But what really sets them apart is the texture. It's a brittle juicy crunchiness that I love. If the crunchy scale goes from carrots to apples and bosc pears, yacon would be the next step on the scale, and then watermelon (which I don't think of as a crunchy food) would be at the end. It's not as hard and dense as a carrot, and it's juicier than the juiciest crunchy-hard bosc pear, but not a dripping type of juicy, and not as juicy as watermelon. Can't think of anything like it.

I don't know if they like hot and humid.

orflo · December 25, 2009

Sweetness of the tubers increases when these are exposed to the sun, or just kept in a storage room (but this goes slower). In the Andes, where they come from, the tubers are judged upon the amount of wrinkles these developed,if they have a lot of wrinkles, they are sweeter and ready for use/sale.
They become so sweet that some sirop is made out of them, and even alcohol can be brewn out of the tubers. Some varieties do sweeten up quicker than others, and some are just sweeter all over. Don't leave the plants in the grounds when you have winter frosts, the plants just can't stand frosts.
Dig them up, in one 'big packet' and place them ina dark, frost-free room, if you can cover them completely with sand or compost or potting earth, do it, that's better for conservation, they can get some botrytis when stored and this covering eliminates most of that. I keep them in big flowering pots, I have to remove the big tubers to do that (over here crops to 35-40 pounds aren't exceptional, I've had tubers that weigh over 3 kgs (6 pounds). The plants are perfectly safe in these flowerpots, they do prefer a somewhat wet storage room (high humidity), or you can get them out on a mild winter day when it's raining, and move them back inside whenever frost threatens.
Here are some varieties: http://picasaweb.google.be/orrflo/Ya...36470944761138

jwr6404 · December 26, 2009

Mensplace
Yacon is a member of the Sunflower family of plants. We've grown them here in the PNW for 2 years. I have plenty of small starter tubers that I could send you if you wanted to try some next season.

habitat_gardener · December 31, 2009

orflo, are your tan and reddish-purple tubers different varieties? Where did you find different varieties?

Mine were all tan last year, but the big one I ate yesterday had reddish-purple-tinged skin, although it was all white inside.

orflo · January 1, 2010

On the picture are four different varieties, the two 'morado' varieties, one variety with yellowish flesh, and one (the most common one) with white flesh. I collected the varieties from friends, and from a University where they do some research on yacon. Cipotato has about 25 varieties in their database, but they stopped sending Andean tubers outside Peru...

November 29, 2009	#1
habitat_gardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: California Central Valley Posts: 2,543	yacon I started answering a question about yacon, Bolivian sunroot, in another thread and got so long-winded that I decided I'd better move the discussion to its own thread. To recap, I've been growing this sweet, crunchy edible tuber for several years. I harvest it around January most years. I get huge tubers as well as lots of propagules. I like to eat them raw, but I've read you can also cook them. (I've read the leaves are edible, but I tried them once and found them very bitter.) The question was, when did I plant and when do I harvest. Usually I plant around April or May, when the tubers start sprouting, if I've stored them correctly. I've found the propagules can be kept indefinitely in small pots, but of course they won't produce much if the roots don't have room to spread. I recently found my extra propagules that I'd stored in sand almost a year ago, which I harvested with the January 2009 crop. For this year's crop, in early 2008 I planted the propagules in 6-inch pots, gave away the ones that had sprouted leaves by the time of the late-April plant exchange, and in summer or fall 2008 planted the leftovers around the garden because I'd read they're good for the soil. They didn't get a foot high by the time cold weather hit, so I left them in place. The big one has been in the ground since probably late spring 2008, but it didn't start producing new foliage this year until April or May. (We have cold snaps as late as mid-April that could freeze exposed foliage.) It has only started flowering in the past month. I have a few others that survived -- a couple in part shade that are only 3 ft. high (where I used to grow the ones that reached 6-7 ft. each year -- maybe not enough water this year?), and one in poorer soil that's been neglected and is under a foot high. I start harvesting sometime after the flowers have faded and the leaves have turned black from the cold, and when I don't have a lot of other things going on in the garden. I've read that yacon can be harvested one tuber at a time, but I found when I start digging, pieces break off and it's easier to do the whole excavation at once. I also read that curing them in the sun for a few days makes them sweeter -- haven't tried that, will have to try it this year if it's not freezing cold.

December 26, 2009	#9
jwr6404 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: University Place, WA Posts: 481	Mensplace Yacon is a member of the Sunflower family of plants. We've grown them here in the PNW for 2 years. I have plenty of small starter tubers that I could send you if you wanted to try some next season. __________________ Jim

November 29, 2009	#2
Mt.Imagine Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Hawaii Posts: 34	Good post HG. This was my first year planting yacon and I didn't get as big a yield as I could have, so I'm trying to examine all the possible factors, including leaving them in the ground longer. I cured them in the sun, and they tasted incredible! From reading your description, it sounds like the ones you planted in the ground at a time other than aprilish didn't do well? Do you think that is because of the cold where you are, or that it is generally better not to leave the plants in the ground all year?

November 30, 2009	#4
Mt.Imagine Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Hawaii Posts: 34	I ordered three plants last year, just enough to try them, and planted them in April. What you say about water and soil fertility seem to be true; I also think I spaced them too close together last year. Thanks for answering; I might replant them long before April this time, but I think I'll leave them in storage for now.

December 4, 2009	#5
mensplace Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: USA Posts: 1,013	And I thought I knew something about veggies. WHERE does one obtain starter tubers. Read about it on Wiki and it sounds fascinating. Also learned that JICAMA is grown from seed, but found a source for those!

December 13, 2009	#6
b54red Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Alabama Posts: 7,068	Never even heard of them. Can you describe the taste? I have a long enough growing season if they like it hot and humid.

December 25, 2009	#8
orflo Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: belgium Posts: 134	Sweetness of the tubers increases when these are exposed to the sun, or just kept in a storage room (but this goes slower). In the Andes, where they come from, the tubers are judged upon the amount of wrinkles these developed,if they have a lot of wrinkles, they are sweeter and ready for use/sale. They become so sweet that some sirop is made out of them, and even alcohol can be brewn out of the tubers. Some varieties do sweeten up quicker than others, and some are just sweeter all over. Don't leave the plants in the grounds when you have winter frosts, the plants just can't stand frosts. Dig them up, in one 'big packet' and place them ina dark, frost-free room, if you can cover them completely with sand or compost or potting earth, do it, that's better for conservation, they can get some botrytis when stored and this covering eliminates most of that. I keep them in big flowering pots, I have to remove the big tubers to do that (over here crops to 35-40 pounds aren't exceptional, I've had tubers that weigh over 3 kgs (6 pounds). The plants are perfectly safe in these flowerpots, they do prefer a somewhat wet storage room (high humidity), or you can get them out on a mild winter day when it's raining, and move them back inside whenever frost threatens. Here are some varieties: http://picasaweb.google.be/orrflo/Ya...36470944761138

December 31, 2009	#10
habitat_gardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: California Central Valley Posts: 2,543	orflo, are your tan and reddish-purple tubers different varieties? Where did you find different varieties? Mine were all tan last year, but the big one I ate yesterday had reddish-purple-tinged skin, although it was all white inside.

January 1, 2010	#11
orflo Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: belgium Posts: 134	On the picture are four different varieties, the two 'morado' varieties, one variety with yellowish flesh, and one (the most common one) with white flesh. I collected the varieties from friends, and from a University where they do some research on yacon. Cipotato has about 25 varieties in their database, but they stopped sending Andean tubers outside Peru...