Oca in Ottawa?

Labelled and bagged oca (aren't I organized for once)

My first attempt to grow oca didn't work out so well but this time worked quite a bit better and was rather encouraging from a crop improvement perspective (not from a holy cow that's an awesome plant that could feed me perspective).

I received some tubers of a common variety called Sunset and another (though the critters scurried off with it) and some seeds. The seedlings look like a shiny sorrel:


Oxalis tuberosa seedlings

They are a popular novelty crop in maritime climates like England, west coast of America etc..* where they thrive in cool, misty weather over a long frost free season. The tubers, reported to taste like lemony potatoes, don't even begin to form until days shorten in fall but they are killed by frost. Reading that, I thought, "why heck yeah, I want to try that in Ottawa, Canada!"


Unhappily putting up with heat and sun.

Some common (though technically unseasonable) cold weather hastened my intended mid-November harvest to November 6. I had been covering them with plastic totes during the first frosts: Simple for a short row. So I pulled them and put them in bags and stored them - on the plants with soil - in the garage hoping to redirect some of the fleshy stem goodness to the tubers.


Storing in bags - the whole lot was also covered with a frost blanket.

For dry plants, this worked well enough and one actually showed quite a bit of growth from first harvest:


Pink and White seed grown oca.

Checking on them today, some of the wetter harvested plant stems were getting a bit mushy, so I decided to pull and compare.


The whole harvest.

As the commercial variety Sunset survived the critter attack, I'm using it as a convenient control. It is a fast-to-bulk variety.


Sunset on plant

Seedling yields were variable of course. Growing out from seed allows for selection from novel varieties. I choose the right hand side:


The yield from two seedlings that had grown side by side.

Best yield was this pink and white one at 85 grams. P.S. This is a crappy yield but I was encouraged:


Dreaming of this weigh scale being filled one day.

Here are some larger tubers with Canadian change for scale. Sunset (standard variety) on bottom:


One of the fun things about oca is the variation in tuber colour.

Next year, I have some ideas to grow better, bigger plants with hopefully bigger, better yields. As it is, I found oca fun to grow. Selection from tubers is appealing as if you get something interesting, it is easy to clonally propagate.

P.S. I've heard of several successful non BC Canadian oca growers. Two live in close-to-maritime conditions favouring oca growth and one just developed this mania this year, growing them in Manitoba! With help from his heated oca-hut, he had quite a respectable harvest. There are also a handful (that I know of) of other crazy folk, like me, in less favourable locations in Ontario or should I say partners in plant exploration.

Other ocaphiles:

Radix rhizowen
Oca-testbed
Wetting the Beds

* New Zealand and South America are known to grow a few too.

A Passion for Edible Root ExplorationAn Interview with Rhizowen Radix

Photo by Radix of a selection of Andean Root Crops

There are few plant people whom I admire more than Radix Rhizowen so I was giddy when he agreed to let me grill him about his hobby of growing and eating rare root crops. I'm pretty sure that the first time I encountered this intrepid unearther of all things tuberous was when I was googling something like oca. I was transported into the hilarious, well researched and fascinating world of his blog radix4roots.

For a floraphile like myself, it is highly enabling and I disappeared down the rabbit hole of his tales for as long as my children would permit. I was also compelled to try and source some of these fascinating roots for myself - no easy task. Crops like oca, yacon (which spell check keeps trying to change to bacon by the way) and the Apios are just not commonly grown and those examples are of more well known rare root crops. However, in 2013, there were posts on Nephrolepsis cordifolia - a fern with edible tubers, Aandegopin, and Soh-phlang. That's not to leave out Mashua - the marmite of roots - as he calls it owing to its mixed taste reviews.


So where does this intrepid root explorer reside? Radix over to you.

I garden on the outskirts of Liskeard, a small town close to the edge of Bodmin Moor, which is in Cornwall, the most southerly county in the UK. We're at about 50 N, but the weather is mild due to the presence of the Gulf Stream. Mild is, of course, a relative term and it can be cool and wet on any day of the year. The defining characteristic of our climate is its unpredictability, although it usually rains a lot. Grass often grows year round in Cornwall and there is even a little tea cultivated here.


Radix4roots - Whoopee for Wapato

I've always enjoyed growing plants and eating has an enduring fascination for me, so exploring the world of edible plants is just a combination of these two powerful themes in my life. Root crops are among the most satisfying crops to grow - something about excavating them is like unearthing buried treasure - that denouement never loses its appeal for me. Unearthing roots is probably an instinctive behavior; there's some evidence to suggest that the harvesting (and cooking) of wild roots and played an important role in human evolution.

Reading your blog is like taking a botanical world tour. Would you say that there was a region that has given you more material and if so why?

I would have to say South America. The range of edible roots tubers cultivated there seems to me to be outstanding. Anyone who is familiar with the book 'Lost Crops of the Incas' will be aware of this. Although my interest in Andean root and tuber crops predates its publication, it certainly did nothing to divert me from my chosen path. That said, there are many fascinating species lurking in Asia, Africa and elsewhere that deserve further investigation. I subscribe to the view that one should do the necessary research and try and match the plant to one's growing conditions, but you don't know until you've tried: prepare to be surprised on a regular basis. Plants and their unknowable antics are the perfect antidote to smug self-congratulation. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Ulluco from radix4roots and a related article Crap Crop of the Incas: My on-off-on affair with high altitude Andean crops

In the A-Z of roots that you have grown, what would you say is your most and least (can I guess) favourite, as well as the rarest and strangest root you’ve grown? Any surprising success or failures?

My list of favourites fluctuates with what has currently caught my interest. During oca season, I become ocasessive and as I hunt for the seedling volunteers; I actually find I can see them before my eyes as I go to sleep. Now that oca seed production has been cracked, it can only be a matter of time before a day-neutral plant turns up. When it does, oca's future will be assured and I'll probably move on to pastures new. .


Radix4roots - Mauka: Expansa by name, Expansive by Nature

I like mauka for its sheer rarity, rather unusual plant architecture and surprisingly hardy disposition. It doesn't taste too bad either. Ulluco almost never fails to frustrate and disappoint. I’d love to have another go with anchote (Coccinia abyssinica) as it grew surprisingly well in an appalling summer and seemed to tuberise at a sensible time.  My dream is to create a properly reliable, hardy, cool weather tolerant sweetpotato. Correction: that's one of my dreams.

Why do you think this sort of amateur plant experimenting and development is important?

Amateurs (read enthusiasts) can make progress by collaborating to create new crops and sharing their successes and methods with like-minded individuals, wherever they may be. Take oca - growing several thousand plants from seed is well within the realms of possibility and will certainly increase the likelihood of a day-neutral mutant turning up. A group of enthusiasts can share this burden and participants can enjoy the fruits (or roots) of their collective labours.


Radix4roots - Yacon: Don't try this at home

This must surely be a golden age for motivated amateurs to develop new varieties and domesticate new crops. How their efforts are to be protected from hostile expropriation remains to be seen.

What project is capturing your imagination at present?

I suppose oca is.  Other interests are hybridizing squashes and developing reliable chillies for our climate.

Radix4roots - Ocabliteration

My aim is to have a wonderfully rich, diverse and productive suite of crops that will thrive here with minimum intervention. Nothing new or original in that, but I suspect that in the future we'll need a wider range of food plants as climatic fluctuations make old stalwarts less reliable. This may involve developing new varieties of old crops (like oca) or domesticating new ones.  There's no point waiting for commercial concerns to do this, we need to act now.  Aside from anything else, I find this work feeds my intellect and my imagination in a way that few other activities do.


Radix4roots - Achote: Out of Africa

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Interested in getting to know roots and their enthusiasts better? Come on down to Radix Root Crops on Facebook.

Description of my disappointing oca disaster*

I was excited to try the andean tuber oca . Known to grow well in areas with long frost free seasons because they don't start to tuberize until nights lengthen, I figured I'd grow them here in the land of hard freezes in October. Makes sense right? But heck, I'm a gardener and if there's one thing almost all of us share, it's optimism. I mean I didn't think I could grow sweet potatoes when I first started gardening here either.

Well, turns out that daylight sensitivity was not going to be my problem. My precious oca plant material was knocked off first by an unrelenting drought followed potentially by some sort of marauding bug - slugs? From the orchard batch, I collected exactly two mini tubers:


These mini tubers are drying out sides up. One is yellow with rose eyes and the other is yellow.

But I still had one beautiful pot of healthy plants. Today, I tentatively moved aside some soil, a bit discouraged to see that the stems seemed to be separated from the roots only to discover:


The juvenile delinquent of some critter eating up my tubers.

A tuber with a grub in it. So I figured I'd dig up the rest but only found one other tuber equally eaten. As I have had mystery grub damage in sweet potatoes, regular potato and garlic, this might be an issue endemic to my back garden. I am in the midst of trying to ID the culprit. The oca was grown in a pot at the back though not in the questionable garden, so it is possible that it came on the tuber stock. I will be tossing the pot and its contents just in case.

These grubbed up tubers won't store but I wonder if they would grow (once I spear the grub). I plan on trying to grow then overwinter some oca plants so I won't be totally without next year.


You lost me at oca

Oxalis tuberosa comes from the Andean area of South America where it has a rich history of use including references to eating the greens but mostly the tubers are used. They taste like lemony potatoes I hear. The sour taste comes from oxalic acid (hence the name) such as found in swiss chard, rhubarb and spinach. Depending on the variety, the concentration of the acid varies as does their preparation. I believe, the ones that you would could get your hands on in the North half of the world are mostly/fully the lower oxalic acid variety so they are eaten much like potatoes. Their leaves are quite pretty, looking like weedy sorrels that you may nibble on in salads.

From what I've read, it is a well known veggie in New Zealand simply referred to as yams but other than those two locations, isn't cultivated much (please correct me if you've been spooning them up since you were a babe in other coordinates). However, lately there has been a resurgence of interest with European bloggers like Rhizowen Radix* including it in his root crop explorations. In North America, it is mainly grown in coastal areas as it is daylight sensitive so that it waits until the days shorten before it forms tubers. It is also killed by hard frost. They are left in the ground after light frosts as rapid tuberization happens at this time. Most of the references I've read have harvests in November or December.

Other than that annoying quality (the day length, temperature thing), they seem to be low care crops. As they stand some shade and from what I've read are not heavy feeders, many gardeners try them in polycultures as in oca test-bed's tomato-oca duo.

Another plant in need of further adaption to a wider variety of climates.

*Attention edible plant geeks: go check out this awesome blog. All that alliteration was for you Radix!

A tale of two nuts

A bag of 'green' black walnuts

At the edge of our clearing are planted 100 black walnuts, Juglans nigra, in lumber spacing or at least planted quite close so they develop tall straight trunks. They are fruiting now or nutting if you prefer. These walnuts are native to eastern North America and are found in the city* despite inhibiting the growth of a wide variety of plants in their vicinity and dropping staining hulls that squish underfoot revealing a rock hard nut within.


Chufa plants with frosted foliage.

Behind our house, some chufa plants that breezed through the drought are now dying back with frost. They produce edible nutlets often called tiger nuts or ground almonds. Though the same genus and species, Cyperus esculentus, yellow nutsedge - considered an invasive plant in some parts - it does not overwinter for me. According to Dan Brisebois from the ferme-cooperative Tourne-Sol, chufa is a frost intolerant variety of this species - var. sativus - and therefore not invasive here.

What do they have in common? They are both a pain to process.


The fibrous root system of chufa filled with treasure.

Chufa is fiddly to harvest as you rummage through the roots to pull off all the nutlets. I guess if I were feeling zen, this would be fun but in my hurry hurry live, it is less joyful.


Mostly clean chufa nutlets.

Next they have to be thoroughly cleaned. I scrub them with bare hands together in a colander. Make sure that you remove any rocks or other debris at the same time. Next, they can be dried to increase their flavour and for storage. Now, if you are me, this will be good news because it means that all further processing is shelved until theoretically you have more time. For a memorable crunch, you can eat them right away too. They can be ground into flour for baking, or made into a slushy but delicious drink horchata or in other ways that you might use almonds, I imagine. I'll have to get back to you after I try them in cookies...


Mostly cleaned black walnuts quite far off fully processed.

Black walnuts, now there's a bit of work. If you are wondering what it might have been like to be a pioneer, go forth and collect ye some of nature's nutty goodness. There seem to be lots of ways of getting to the nut but here's what I did. I tore off the outer hull with gloved hands (for a more authentic experience, turn your hands rainbow brown by doing it bear handed) then I put them in a non staining sink and rubbed them together to remove most of the rest of the debris though I recently saw that someone used a wire scrubber which would work better.  Nature Skills write up on how to remove the hulls.

Finally, put them somewhere airy to dry like an onion bag or mesh screen for several weeks to months before attempting to get into their Fort Knox like shell. More on that later.

***


* Curious where to find nut trees around the Ottawa area? Here is a map. I don't know about how available these nut trees are.

The famous drink horchata is made with chufa.

Chufa is used as game food though they may be referring to yellow nutsedge.

Bringing in the Garlic

This year, I decided to squish leek moth but not harvest early to see how much, if any, damage was done to the cloves. The plants were dying back so I dug them up.


A palmful of garlic goodness

About a third of the plants were entirely dry and yellow - keep in mind we are in a now Level II drought so I've noticed things maturing faster than usual. The rest were dying back.


My beds were dotted with grassy weeds tossed onto the sides during harvesting as you can see here.

A couple plants escaped having their would be reproductive heads - scapes - ripped off. This can lead to smaller bulbs as the plant diverts energy to bulbil production. In this case, there was a marked difference but this is not a year of plenty.


Scapes full of little bitty bulbils or mini cloves. You can use these to start a whole colony of garlics if you wish. 

The bulbs were given a gentle rub to remove dirt before their stems and roots were trimmed. These are hard necks so I don't braid them. You can still get fancy with them but I haven't bothered.


Hard working kids.

There were two plots nearby each other. The first were garlic that was in its second year of adaption here. What varieties these were is lost in time as they came from my old garden but I seem to have a preference for those with a red hue to their skins.


Garlic variety: mystery mixed.

The second garlic patch was in its first year of adaption, ie. I bought the bulbs last summer.


Garlic varieties: Music - big white ones and um? well... more mystery mixed!


One side of the patch had a lot of damage that I've never seen before. It doesn't seem to come down from the scape as I imagine leek moth would but from the outside. Not sure what it is.


Something's been sampling the garlic.

So now we can go back to using the heavy stuff - garlic cloves - for cooking after a month or so of subsisting on garlic scapes - by no means a hardship. Some of these previous bulbs will have to be put aside for planting. I like to put about sixty cloves in the ground so that'd be about twelve. Normally, the advice is to plant the biggest cloves from the best bulbs. These are planted in the fall. For more on how to grow garlic, see Paul Pospisil's article from Boundary Garlic Farm.

Dandelion to the Rescue Harvest Monday

This fall, among the beets, parsnips and carrots, I dug out of the ground, I also collected dandelion roots. They were stored in fall leaves in a pot in our cellar. About a month ago, I started taking them out to force.

Some were potted in moistened soil and left to grow in the near dark of the furnace room. A small window makes for soft green rather than yellow leaves. After harvesting these milder dandelion greens, they were moved upstairs to the kitchen window where within days they became deep green and prepared to flower! Can't wait to see those sunshine yellow blooms.

These dandelion and chicory roots were soaked in water for a few hours than place in a freezer bag in the vegetable drawer of our fridge to sprout as mentioned in Salad Leaves for All Seasons by Dowding.

I particularly like eating bitters in deep winter as a vitamin and mineral rich tonic.

***

You've heard it before and I'll say it again: many weeds are good for you and the queen of them all is arguably the Taraxacum officinale. It is hardy, doesn't take much room and requires even less care, pretty if you can get past the reflex to eject it from the earth and useful. Roots can be roasted, leaves used in all manner of recipe calling for 'greens' and petals can give their delicate flavour to baked goods or even wine. If you find dandelion greens too bitter then concentrate on eating new growth in the spring or blanch like you might endive by placing a plate over the crown. You can also harvest them in the fall to use in the winter!

There are various species of dandelions including red leaved, pink or white flowered too. In places where dandelion is grown as a green more commonly, there are some that have been selected for juicy hearts or thicker leaves such as Ameliore a Coeur Plein and Vert de Montmagny but the common weed is wonderful enough. Instead of pulling out every dandelion you see, give a few some extra love and experiment in the kitchen with this edible perennial.

***

More Dandelion ideas at Floridata - Never heard of Cramaillotte before.

I just had to include this recipe as the pictures are great: Dandelion Flower Fritters

Harvest Monday - Jeruselum Artichokes

For a 2012 change, my Harvest Monday posts are being dressed up as the Story of Supper.

Story of Supper 1 - Leftovers

condensed food growing adventures

Lunch - the sweets used were a white fleshed variety.

We had people over for New Year's dinner but cooked way too much even for a day of excess. So today, I used what was leftover from one of our kid friendly options - rice with peas and grated sweet potato - and fried it up with some sliced Jeruselum artichokes and onion with kale chips sprinkled on top. Other than the rice, all the rest are easily grown in the Ottawa area. Quinoa, polenta (made from ground corn) or even wild rice would make a nice substitute for the rice in this dish and are also easily grown. If you are interested in going beyond fresh summer eats, there is a movement underfoot to grow grains in the city such as in Lawns to Loaves.

This story begins when I first learned that there were perennial vegetables.* Talk about a paradigm shift! I could have vegetables that were as easy to grow as my herb garden? I started to gather as many as possible including all the classics like horseradish, rhubarb and Jerusalem Artichoke. A friend had brought me some sunchokes for planting from a farmer's market. They grew and grew and grew. My neighbour referred to them as the Jack-in-the-beanstalk plant. After reaching 12ft, they threw out some comically small in comparison yellow sunflowers. After frost, I felt like a kid unearthing the palm sized crunchy tubers from the soil. When we moved here, I brought some descendants of that original variety and have added some other types including one with red skins.

The next chapter happened last fall when I tossed some mixed kale seeds on the cool, wet ground expecting them to sprout in the spring as I usually do of plants that successfully self sow. Late in winter, I seeded long day, storage onions in a flat and in spring my kids dropped shelling peas into a shallow trench. The onions were transplanted in another trench that was carefully tended throughout the season to produce the best growth. Sweet potato tubers that had been placed in warm water in a sunny window had grown slips that were planted as soon as summer had set in which is about the time that the early peas were ready - around the beginning of June. In my family, it is challenging to grow enough peas to freeze because those sweet treats are mostly shelled and devoured while standing over the vines.

By late summer, the kale was in full swing so freshly washed, dried and salted leaves were placed in a dehydrator to make addictive kale chips. Onions had also bulked up so were picked to cure and then their dried leaves were braided to be hung in a cool, dry place. The ground beneath the sweet potatoes was beginning to heave. Before first frost, I carefully pitch forked the soil. The kids collected the sizeable treasures to cure at high heat and humidity for a week or so before being stored at room temperature to continue to deepen in flavour. Frost does not harm the tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke however but improves it. I waited until the ground threatened to freeze solid before digging up the bed, putting up the harvest in pots of dirt that will be stored in the cold cellar.

A few months later, it is all ready for use: the peas are defrosted, the sweet potato and Jerusalem artichoke peeled and sliced, the onion torn from the braid to be caramelized. All fried up with cooked rice and topped with crumbled, dry kale leaves.

* For the interested, please see Plants for a Future (cross check info as there are some errors especially in hardiness zones), Perennial Vegetables by Toensmeier (available at the Ottawa library), or just put terms like culinary herbs, useful wild plants, edible native plants, permaculture plants, or self sowing vegetables into a search engine.

The Sunchoke - Helianthus tuberosus

Sunchokes taken from storage in a pot of dirt in our cellar.

These perennial tuber making members of the sunflower family store their sugars in a form called inulin that can cause gas in some people. Our family does not seem to be affected (thankfully). Inulin is also the culprit in bean's reputation. They are so easy to grow that some people call them invasive though I haven't heard of them seeding themselves this far north so they are more contained. They are sometimes recommended as a warm season screen as they can grow impressively tall - some of mine in my old house were 12 feet tall - but will lodge in a wind storm. As with any self reliant plant, exercising a little control will make them manageable. Put them in a place where they won't be a nuisance or affect the growth of other plants. As they are sunflowers they may cause an allopathic reaction in other plants though I haven't noticed this.

Dig out the patch in the fall after some frost and store in moist sand in a cellar or soil. Their thin skins lose moisture quickly so they may not store as long as some other roots in less than ideal conditions. You can choose to amend the soil then with some compost or well rotted manure and replant some nice looking tubers but I often find that some tubers, or pieces at any rate, will escape your attention restarting the patch again next year. You can leave some in the ground to harvest until the ground freezes and before they start to grow again in the spring.

I've also recently learned that the blanched shoots are quite tasty. You can leave on the skin, just scrub the tubers. To make this easier, knock off the knobs** that may be hiding the dirt and scrub those separately or you can peel the skin. You can use them in similar ways to potatoes but they're flavour, though pleasant in my opinion, is more overwhelming. Raw, they have a crisp, juicy texture and are nice in salad. They can be baked but quickly turn mushy - still tasty though. You can also add them to soups, sauces or fry them. I find they pair really well with seafood.

** In my last residence, the tubers of my variety were quite smooth mostly with few knobbly bits. The ground was quite friable and fertile. Here it is also sandy but less fertile. The plants did not grow as long and the tubers were significantly more knobbly. I'm curious to see if this changes as more organic matter is reincorporated into the soil.

The Root of all Harvest Mondays

I had a nice harvest of parsnip that were grown in combination with Swiss Chard. Half the row was left in the ground to use in the spring and for seed.*

The details of roots dug:


I've been digging up roots while the ground is unfrozen to store in our cellar - not quite of the root kind as it's located in our basement so though it is insulated and cooler than the rest of the house, it's not particularly humid but I have stored in such conditions before with a fair amount of luck.

Roots represented for our winter harvest hopes include: carrot, beets, parsnips, winter 'daikon' radish, horseradish and jeruselum artichoke. Also packed away are dandelion roots, chicory, and celariac for forcing. Potted up for greens are swiss chard, bulb fennel and cardoon. I've also got some canna and dahlia bulbs (both technically edible - I've not tried them yet) and some gladiolas resting the cold away.


At the far left are trimmed cardoon leaves with some small, self seeded daikon radishes and some equally undersized celariac for storage. I plan on forcing the celariac for celery leaves. Not sure why it didn't want to grow this year but I'm guessing water stress as it was in the sandtrap garden. Next year, I'll incorporate more organic matter in its planting location. Celariac makes a decorative border.


Some of these are experimental. My attempts to find further references to overwintering globe artichoke roots - and therefore cardoon - have come to not.** The bulb fennel is another trial as its root is not dissimilar to carrot.


Next year, I'll have sweet cicely, divisions of lovage hopefully and oyster root (Scorzonera and salsify) but for now, I want to increase my stock more than I want to eat them during the whiteout. Also resting undisturbed in the garden are crosnes (Stachys affinis), and various multiplier onions.

Exciting discovery!


So I've discovered that parsnips and Swiss Chard grow quite well together. I wasn't sure if the heavy leaf cover of the Swiss Chard would overcompete with the parsnips but perhaps, the different levels of the root growth - though Swiss Chard does have a tap like root, more obvious in some, it is not as long as the parsnip and has a lot bushy secondary roots near the surface - seem to have enabled them to be good neighbours. The first parsnip I pulled out from the clump of Swiss Chard was baseball bat sized. The only roots that weren't worth pulling were crowded out by their own kind. Clearly I didn't thin adequately when they germinated, probably thinking that the bugs would do it for me as they often do. It's a nice combination as the colourful Swiss Chard fills in the spaces between the parsnip leaves. If you want to go all out, planting this with a border of nasturtiums sets off the bright colours of varities like Rainbow Lights Chard or a mix of gold and reds. I also like to interplant Rhubarb with dark leafed swiss chard and maybe a border of dwarf red tipped marigolds or red English Daisy to play off the ruby theme.


Storing in autumn leaves:


A range of chicory heads as pretty as flowers. I am going to cut and eat these over the next little while and then store the roots for forcing later if they so oblige. There are varieties specifically bred for forcing to produce Belgium Endive.

Previously, I've always stored my roots in the quintessential moist sand (rarely) or in plain, old garden dirt (mostly) in low boxes. This year, I thought I'd try leaves as I've heard the odd mention of it. Apparently, a drawback is that the leaves will rot. In my case, that might help (assuming it doesn't affect the roots negatively) as it would add moisture. We'll see. To further increase humidity, I'll be adding bowls of water around the closed off basement cellar. Some of my roots are planted up in soil as well such as celariac, and others are loose. I'll report back how they do.


In the meantime - the how to:

Typically roots that are stored for eating in the winter are those that can either go into dormancy before growing again like potatoes or are biennial so they wait until after a period of environmental change, such as cold, before resuming growth then flowering and setting seed. Therefore, storage either in the ground or in a special made storage place like a cellar is the way to get seeds from vegetables such as carrots and parsnips.

You can also extend the time that you get to eat some tasty greens like celery by potting them up and bringing them inside. Which brings me to another fun thing to do with stored roots, force them. This means you take them from their cozy cellar bed of sand/dirt and pot them in some more sand/dirt and then place in a warm spot and water them. They will start to grow. If you want them to green up, then you'd place them in a sunny spot but if you want them to grow pale, delicate and sometimes more palatable, such as for dandelion yellows (sounds like a disease doesn't it but it tastes quite yummy) then grow them in the dark. This is the way that people produce Belgium Endive or Chicons.*** Many leaves of roots are edible including turnip, beet, carrot (so I understand), chicory, radish, parsley root (and parsley), celariac and even cabbage.


Some big ol' beets giving two harvests: leaves and roots. As siblings of Swiss Chard, you can use beet leaves in a similar way though they might be a bit tougher. The other day I fried them up with some garlic and mixed them together with coucous, an egg, a bit of wine vinegar and some flour then fried this as patties. It was sublime.

A root cellar is the classic place to store roots that require cool temperatures and high humidity, though placing them in a plastic bag in your fridge works well too. If you live in mild climate, you could probably just dig them out of the ground on mild days or build a clamp. Piling a bunch of fall leaves like a frost blanket over your in-ground roots will help keep frost out. I recently saw a suggestion in motherearthnews to place these fall leaves in a plastic bag for easy removal and replacement. Good idea! Even for those in harsher climates, this would extend the time you had access to your in-ground roots. It is also a way to protect roots that might need a bit of help to make it through the winter.

I have a lot of success overwintering vegetables in situ for seed saving the next year or eating early in the spring. The only classic root crop that pops to my mind that never overwinters, except the obviously frost tender ones, are turnips. I also get heavy losses of carrots. We get heavy, consistent snow cover so this insulates the ground most years. However, I have no access to them for the same reason.


Some stuff I did earlier: potted celaric, some misc. roots stored in leaves, a bag of edible leaves that were cut off the roots to make a vegetable stock, and a bag of carrots for the fridge.

To store:

1. Dig up roots as late as possible in the season. Be delicate with them
2. You don't need to remove all the dirt but feel free to brush off excess
3. Undamaged, well grown roots of storage varities do best
4. Trim off the greens to ~2 inch stubs - careful not to damage growing crown
5. Place in your favourite storage medium and container - generally recommended is sand, sawdust or vermiculite as medium in some sort of tub.

There are lots of good books and sites out there with charts to guide you when it comes to ideal storage conditions. Here's a reference from good Cornell University.


* To select for the best plants, you can dig up your biennial roots, inspect for insect damage and qualities (even sampling a bit of the end of the root) then replant. It also doesn't hurt to give the roots a blanket of mulch to protect against frost unless you have a serious problem with rodents nibbling away at your roots.
** Actually I did find a couple mentions of people trying it but not picture filled examples of them succeeding so if you did this, speak up! I'm mostly interested in trying to force them for no reason other than curiousity. I have left some in the ground that I plan on covering with a thick layer of leaves and dirt (rather like a clamp) to see if I can carry them through in ground. Probably wishful thinking.
*** You won't be surprised to find out that there is more than one way to grow a chicon. You can also pot the roots up in sand/sandy soil, place in a cool spot and then when you want to force them, bring them into a warm, but dark place and water them. I've also read in Salad Leaves for All Sesons by Dowding that you can force them in a plastic bag (or as he put it a bin liner or polythene sack) in a warm, dark place. They can be laid horizontally.

A Sweet Haul

One of the descent producing plants in The Back Rock Garden

Ipomoea batatas grew like a viney weed all summer and now, with temperatures threatening to drop at week's end, I've yanked out the vines and carved open the ground to see what the ground had been hiding.


Here are some nice vines growing in The Back Rock Garden with a pumpkin wandering across.

The sweets were grown in two locations this year, both new gardens, but with very different results though I think I have an explanation. The first is The Barn Circle Garden - figured I'd give them official names now and I opt for descriptive - which was created by layering on horse manure enriched soil directly atop sod. Only short season varieties of sweets, from Mapple Farms such as George Jet, were grown with black plastic mulch (aka black garbage bags stretched over the soil and secured with more soil around the edges) with 18 inch centres.


I believe this is Georgia Jet showing growth cracks.

The second garden will be called The Back Rock Garden because it is built around and on top of a large outcropping beneath the dirt that can be seen in parts where I dug it out. This was created with semi-circular berms and swales following the topography. The sod in the swales was piled up on the berms to increase the soil depth of the beds. The sweets - a mixture of varieties including some from a friend in France that were planted late - were grown with clear plastic mulch in roughly the same spacing.


You can tell that your sweets are really starting to bulk up when the ground starts to be pushed up near the plant into a mound. Here, I removed the plastic mulch and a bit of dirt.

The haul from The Barn Circle Garden was pretty descent. I got lots of large bakers. They were almost exclusively directly under where the plant emerged from the soil. Didn't find any wanderers.


When injured, sweets produce latex to seal the wounds.

However, despite luxuriant vine growth in The Back Rock Garden, the harvest was significantly poorer. There were a couple plants with good yields which were the short season ones but the ones from France, that probably needed a longer growing season and were planted a touch later, yielded little to no sweets emphasizing the importance of variety. The only one that made a sweet potato of any size was Beauregard. However, the France plants, also had some flowers unlike the short season ones.


This is actually from a third location where I put some homeless plants hence the grass clipping mulch around it. It had the prettiest flower. You can see their relationship to morning glories.

They were also some adventurous roots in The Back Rock Garden that given time may have fattened into what would be impressively large sweets. I also think that the way the garden was built with sod piled on top of sod might have supplied too much nitrogen hence the beautiful vine growth. Hard to say.


A variety named White Fraser. It didn't have as high of a yield as the other two major ones - Georgia Jet and Tainung 65 - that I tried this year but still respectable.

The Back Rock Garden is a sun trap facing south with clear plastic so the soil overall would have been hotter - good for sweet potatoes - but it may have suffered from more drought - not so good - being higher in elevation from the other and sandy in soil composition. I also get a lot more Japanese beetle damage in the back.


White Frazer from the Back Rock Garden with Japanese Beetle Grub Damage.

Now the challenge is to cure them as they need both high heat and humidity to seal the skins from moisture loss and improve storage considerably. I don't have any easy way of doing this like an independently heated room so I'm trying placing them in paper bags in a plastic container with lid that is left with a small crack open in the sun. We'll see how it goes.



Here's the round-up. Not bad but we'll try and double it for next year.

***

Want to grow sweet potatoes? I recommend the book Sweet Potatoes for the Home Garden by Ken Allan. Can't wait until then? Here are my slap-dash instructions (the book is really good):

1. Order some slips or tubers to make slips of a SHORT season variety in the winter/spring.
2. Plant a week or two after all danger of frost in a sunny well drained spot with ideally light (sandy) soil with neutral to slighly acid pHl. You can plant these up beforehand if they come early or if you want to give them a head start. Just don't put them out until soil and air are warm.
3. To increase success, increase the heat and plant in raised mounds, row cover, or with clear plastic mulch. Black seems to do okay too but Mr. Allan's authorative suggestion is for clear. Put the mulch on a couple weeks before you plant. It should be pulled tight over the bed and secured at the edges with soil. Plant into Xs cut into the plastic about 18 inches apart and use more soil or sand to seal these. You want to make a little depression in the planting area to funnel water.
5. It doesn't hurt to add organic matter to the soil before planting. Sweet potatoes are reputed to survive with little water and nutrients but they do better if they get enough to drink. I wouldn't fertilize (but then I never do) but adding a bit of compost to the site should be nothing but helpful.
6. Let them grow.
7. Harvest before first frost when the temperatures start to cool off. I like to leave mine in the ground until early-mid September.
8. Cure for storage. This is keeping them at high temperatures, around 27C, and high humidity for several weeks (according to Mapple Farms). I am trying to figure out an easy way of doing this. Click on their brochure for more info.
9. Store at room temperature unwashed until you want to use them.
10. Use small ones to start slips in the spring!

Harvest Monday - Caption that Carrot

-- Your caption here -- This carrot must have gotten a bit too much nitrogen which I don't supplmentally provide so unless it was extra rich compost or a variety that is just prone to branching, I have to wonder what protein rich source stewed here... ew.

We are in the transition time where tenders like tomatoes and beans are still filling baskets but fall crops like kale and carrots are plumping up. In a couple of weeks, fresh harvest will transform from gazpachos and french cut beans to frosty green salads and hardy root stews. But I can't help but sampling a few roots now.

The crosnes are plumping up.


Talk about weird looking veg, here are some Stachys affinis

The greens and roots of self seeded salsify, black skinned scorzonera (both called oyster root) and even dandelion are edible - though I don't plan on eating the dandelion roots, just their greens. Roots will improve in flavour as starch is converted to sugar to act as an antifreeze after the first couple frosts but I'm willing to give them a taste test now.


Salad and main course.