Yacon in Bloom

The yacon is suddenly looking lush and grand. Perhaps the constant rain has affected it, or perhaps the shortening days has something to do with it. But the plants have grown taller, so tall that they are falling over and now cascade down the sides of the pallet boxes. The homemade soil/compost in the boxes don't give such tall heavy plants a good footing to stand upright.  

Even with the lack of solid footing and their tipping over, the plants are pushing blooms and starting to produce tubers. 

The tubers are still too young to harvest. By Thanksgiving Day I should be able to gently harvest some, with the bulk being ready by Christmas. That is, as long as the plants don't die back prematurely. In past dry periods I've had plants dieback early. 

Above, the typical leaves of the yacon. They look very much like sunflowers.......of course because they are in the sunflower family. 

Yacon 2016

The past month the rain has almost been non-existent. And the yacon has acted accordingly. It quickly matured, produced tubers, and died back. 

Above, all those brown stalks are the died off yacon. 

Normally I've waited until Thanksgiving to start harvesting yacon, but obviously with the plants died back, there's nothing holding me back from harvesting now. So I opened the pallet grow boxes to see what was up. 

Below is a closeup. The plant, conveniently I might add, grew right along the side of the box. Removing that side revealed a perfect demonstration of the yacon growing habit. Brown stalk above, propagation nodules at the soil surface and just below (the whitish knobs), and edible tubers underneath (the brownish tater-like things). 

After shaking the dirt off and removing the plant from the box, here's what I harvested.....

Wow, even I was impressed. But I soon learned that the whole box wasn't so productive. Each pallet box contained six mature plants. But only the one that was along the front wall produced lots of nodules and tubers. The other plants also produced, but not nearly as much. 

Why the difference? The pallet boxes were located in the semi-shade. I was using a space not deemed prime for most vegetables. But I was testing to see if yacon would do ok there. The front edge of the pallet boxes actually got more sun during the year than the rest of the box, due to the differing inclination of the sun during winter versus summer. That's because tall nearby trees interfered with the sun during the summer, resulting in quite a bit of shade. 

Conclusion: yacon does better with more sun. Although it will produce some in semi-shade, it produces a whole lot better with more sun. Therefore I will change the location where I'm growing yacon and move some other crop to this semi-shaded spot. 

By the way, did you notice that the pallet box also yielded a half cubic yard of compost/soil? I'll reuse about 33% of that to restart the next pallet grow box and move the 66% to a spot in the gardens that is begging for more soil. I have plenty of shallow beds that could really use the addition of compost/soil mix. 

Time To Restart Yacon

Last year I started the yacon April 8th. This year I'm starting it exactly one month earlier, March 8th. Will it make a difference in harvest date? Will it result in larger tubers in general? We shall see. 

Since the yacon grew and produced well in the pallet grow boxes, I'm going that route again. I've refilled three boxes. I laid the tubers atop the fill, then topped the box off with coarse mulch. 

Since some of the tubers were already starting to sprout before planting, it only took 4 days for them to pop up through the mulch. In the above photo you can see just how coarse the mulch is. I found that this works ok with yacon in grow boxes. 

As time goes along, the material in the boxes will decompose and settle. The level will sink at least 50%. But that's ok. With yacon, the plant is tall and tends to flop over in the wind. So the sides of the grow box will give it some wind protection and support. 

So to date, I have three boxes planted with yacon. I still have tubers left over. So I'm going to make 2-3 more boxes and plant the rest of the tuber starts. I'll plant them closer to April 8th so that I have a comparison between the two different start dates. It should be fun to see if there is a difference at the end. 

Yacon Harvest

Thanksgiving, time to start harvesting yacon. I went back and checked on the plants. One pallet box is ready. The other looks like it still needs a couple of weeks more. 

This is what the plants looked like in the first pallet grow box. They've bloomed out and are losing all their leaves. 

Harvesting the yacon was so easy. It was a matter of disconnecting one side of the box then using my hands to scoop out the soft soil/compost. The roots were readily exposed. 

Once I twisted off the tubers that were exposed, I then could easily pull on the stalk to pull the rest of the root ball out. How easy! 

The edible tubers are the tannish things that look like fat sweet potatoes. The propagation tubers, or knobs, are at the base of the stalk and are considerably smaller. In the above picture, they are white. In the picture below, they are reddish due to the fact that the soil wasn't covering them as well.

I'm amazed at how many edible tubers the plants produced. I got a full five gallon bucket of varying sized tubers from this one pallet grow box. When I've grown yacon in the ground, I didn't see such heavy production. Plus it was difficult to harvest the tubers without breaking them all. 

By growing the yacon in the pallet grow boxes, the tubers were nicely formed, big, plentiful, and simple to gather. I was impressed. Impressed enough to say that this is the way I plan to grow yacon for now on. 

Bonus......I got a half a yard of nice composty soil from the box. 

Yacon In Grow Boxes - Revisted

Way back in April I planted some yacon in pallet grow boxes as an experiment. I really didn't know if they would do well there. So it's time to visit those boxes. 

The yacon is growing quite well. I've never done a thing to these boxes since the day I planted the yacon. Never pulled a weed, never added mulch, never watered them. So what they've done has been completely on their own. The plants have grown quite tall, well over 6'. 

I notice that they are blooming now. Lots of little mini sunflower-ish gold flowers. 

According to past experience, the plants will be forming tubers now. I haven't checked yet for tubers, but I might try that in a few days. In the past I didn't start harvesting until Thanksgiving. But this time around is different because of the growing method. So I will check if it makes a difference on the harvesting. 

Stay tuned for a harvest update. 

Yacon in a Pallet Grow Box

Up until this year I've always grown yacon in the traditional way....right in the ground. But it seems to me that this plant would do very well in one of the pallet grow boxes. This is some of the reasons that led me to this conclusion.....

....it responds very well to compost and manure

....it likes to send roots down and produce its largest tubers under the plant

....tubers can easily reach 15" below the surface

....the tall stalks could use a bit of support

....it grows best when I can apply extra mulch and manure-mulch periodically during the growing season

....it does best for me in soil that can stay moist but also drains well

The pallet grow boxes seem to be able to provide for everything on my list. 

....the box is essentially one giant compost bin with manure

....the boxes are deep

...the tubers can easily be harvested by simply removing a side and gently scooping the soil away

....as the growing season progresses, the soil level will sink, leaving the pallet sides available to help support the tall stalks

....as the soil level lowers, it is easy to add layers of mulch and manure

....the boxes drain well and the compost mix retains moisture

In theory, it sounds great. So next step is to give it a try. 

(Disclaimer--- the photos are lousy. The day was overcast and drizzling. No sun = lousy photos.) 

Enter one clump of yacon plant base, loaded with nodes that are starting to sprout......

First step: cut the clump into pieces for planting. By dividing the clump up, I can get lots of smaller plants. I find from experience that a smaller clump with 1 to 3 sprouts produces a nice sized plant where the underground tubers don't get overcrowded. 

Dividing the clump is easy. The nodules are crisp and easy to cut or break apart. 

Above - here's the grow box that I'm planting today. It's been filled and tromped down for several weeks. It has heated up and cooled down. So it's ready. I simply laid the pieces on top. (pictured below)

I planted 9 pieces, 5 of which I will be transplanting to another grow box in a week or so. That will leave four yacon plants in this box. The second box is almost ready for planting but is still a tad too warm, so I'll wait one more week for that one. But in the meantime the yacon keikis can spend a few days starting to grow some roots while in this box.

Above-  I'm piling about 3 inches of garden soil on top. Of course 3 inches isn't much, but remember that I plan to continually keep adding mulch, compost, or manure. Eventually the yacon will be under 5-6 inches of material, maybe more.

The final step, above---- water. I watered the box lightly. Since it is an overcast and drizzly day, I haven't added any mulch on the top. I'll let the rain moisten the soil for me tonight. Tomorrow will be time to add an inch or so of mulch, enough to keep the sun off the soil surface. As the yacon grows, I will add more grass clipping mulch so that it will be 2-3 inches thick. If we go into a drought, then the mulch layer will need to be thicker.