Hello to all
I am a researcher in iran.I and my cooperator have collected 22 accessions from region of Tarom (one of areas of Zanjan province). We want to research taht how many genotypes are being farm in this area and also study resistance to puccinia alli. please gide me how I operate thate conclude best.

on this post.

He actually doesn’t say it’s specifically on garlic, rather alliums in general, but since my original post was on garlic I assume that’s what he meant.

Does anyone have any information for him?

I can say that in the last few years since I’ve been making posts about garlic rust, I first read that it was present in on the US west coast, specifically in California in the region around Gilroy and a few isolated places in Oregon.  I also knew it was present in northern Europe because it was in my garden and those of fellow gardeners in the UK, Denmark and Sweden.

In the years that followed I had reports from readers that it was present in the entire Willamette Valley area of Oregon, and later British Columbia in Canada and Los Angeles, in southern California.  Two years ago someone reported it appeared in Ethiopia.  I see mentioned on the Internet it’s also appeared this year on the east coast of the US in Maine.  It seems to be spreading now, almost all over the world.

Following a suggestion from Søren, a fellow blogger in Denmark I’ve been experimenting with spraying dilute milk on my plants.  I have not done this in any sort of scientific way, but my feeling is it’s of significant benefit.  It seems to slow the rust down and manage it, to the extent it’s no longer a serious problem.  I spray this on the plants about once a week or after rain, during the last 2-3 months or when I think rust infection is likely to occur.  It’s benefit seems to be much greater if applied before the plants are infected.  I use a ratio of 3-10 parts water to one part milk.

In the last several years I have grown more than 120 varieties of garlic in my garden, and a friend of mine more than 300.  We have not really noticed significant signs of resistance to garlic rust on any of them, except a few of the more vigorous varieties like Susan Delafield and Estonian Red (a purple stripe type) seem to stand up a little longer to the rust probably because of the strength of the plants, and some silverskin varieties like Chilean Silver seemed to get infected a little later than the others.

The other thing a number of people observed was the application of high nitrogen fertilizer, in particular animal manure, caused the rust problem to become much worse.

Alas I didn’t have time to organize an event in the UK this year, but maybe next year.  If anyone has any ideas for speakers or anything else related to an event in 2011, please let me know, either in a comment here or private email.

I’ve posted before about my black alder trees.  I’m really pleased with them, and I thought it was time for an update.  They are now almost 2 years old, and I think I’m just really starting to see some of the benefits.

They are nitrogen fixing trees, meaning they put nitrogen into the ground as they grow.  Many gardeners plant beans or peas for this reason, but the difference with a nitrogen fixing tree is it is perennial so it keeps growing and it’s also large and deep rooted, so it fixes a lot of nitrogen deep into the ground.  Black alders are also a native species for me, which is an important reason why I choose it and like it.  Now that I know what I’m looking for, I see them in a lot of wild places.

It’s a tree, which means if you let it grow it will get huge.  I don’t do that.  As well as getting big, it doesn’t mind being severely cut back.  Whenever I think it’s getting on the large side or it’s in the way, I just whack off as much as I want and it cheerfully grows back.  About the size you see in this picture is what I generally find best, a slightly overgrown stump.

By cutting it back, it also helps it release it’s nitrogen into the ground.  By cutting leaves and branches off the top, it causes some of it’s roots to die and rot, and so release nitrogen.  Also, by cutting the tree back around the time it’s trying to produce seeds, it prevents it from putting resources into producing seeds and so consuming some of the nitrogen it already fixed.  It also keeps it from producing too many weeds.

By now a number of these trees are becoming well established, and they are making a noticeable difference to their surroundings.  At the beginning they caused a bit of a weed problem, because they were fixing nitrogen close to the surface.  As they became established, they fix nitrogen much deeper, meaning there was no immediate weed problem and the overall improvement in soil health of the area meant fewer weeds in general.  I would say however the benefits of the trees are not seen much beyond a meter or 2 from the tree itself.

One of the things I decided to experiment with was companion planting my garlic with some black alder trees.  I had little choice in fact, because the trees were established were it was time to rotate the garlic crop too.  Rather than removing the trees, I decided to see how it went.

Normally garlic, and alliums in general, are considered companion ‘enemies’  to nitrogen fixing plants.  They tend to stunt one another’s growth.  What I found was quite the opposite.  I couldn’t really say if the alder’s growth was stunted, as they grow pretty fast regardless, but the garlic planted near the trees developed quite large and healthy bulbs.  I guess because the roots of the alder are so deep, there’s little or no conflict between the plants.

I’m so happy with the alders in fact, this winter I’m going to try to buy some more.  I found them before on a local EBay equivalent for €1 per tree, and I’m going to see if I can find the same thing again.  I guess I have 20 or so trees, and I would like to double that number.  In particular, I would like to plant new trees in poorer parts of my garden, and perhaps remove some of the larger trees that are getting a little in the way by now and aren’t needed any more.

If you want to try something similar in your garden, I suggest looking for a native species that fixes nitrogen.  There are quite a number of possibilities.  By getting a native species, you know the plant will grow and thrive but at the same time not naturalize and turn into an invasive weed.  In some climates, the black alder is considered invasive.

Here are some excerpts (with permission) from his emails:

Thanks for offering to help. I appreciate the difficulty in trying
to determine a garlic variety in this way. On my own, I could possibly hope to narrow to Rocambole vs. Purple Stripe classification. I’m hoping to be able, with your help, to possibly narrow further. I’ve also read the Volk paper, so I understand those classifications are not perfect. A short list of possibilities is probably the best I can hope for. Ideally, I might be able to learn more about the actual origins of this particular cultivar.

I ordered the the garlic, called “H&A” by the seller (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) and the description only listed as “rare hardneck”. I contacted Baker Creek for more information, but the grower Merlyn Neidens had passed away, so no further inquiries could be made.

So that is the history. The bulbs I received were medium to extra large. This was my first year harvest, so I only got medium to large bulbs. The bulbs I planted had silvery white wrappers, which tan to brown clove wrappers (to the best of my recall). At the time, I guessed it was a rocambole variety.

After growing however, I’m more inclined to believe PS, possibly marbled subgroup (see photos). The scapes typically did a 270 degree curl, though a couple had the rocambole style double loop. The bulbs had characteristic purple stripes initially. One bulb that I peeled fresh seemed to develop more purple coloration as it cured in my kitchen. The other bulbs when cured tended more toward silvery to white outer wrappers with some purple showing through.

The clove wrapper on many cloves is incomplete/split, as seen in the open bulb photo. The bulbils are still maturing, but look largish and few (approx 15-20 at a guess) from what I’ve read, this indicates a leaning toward rocambole again, but doesn’t rule out PS. There is only a single layer of cloves, 8-10 per bulb, but that doesn’t really help much.

Photo link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bgreyt/Garlic?authkey=Gv1sRgCKia0MeP2punKg&feat=directlink

I suggested to him that it seemed like it may be a creole type, mostly because of it’s color and clove shape, and I also found a reference to it on the Internet with this link:

http://rpagarlic.blogspot.com/2008/07/2008-garlic-crop-is-harvested.html

This was his reply:

So, I have an update on tracking down H&A origins. Turns out the link you found was the source for Merlyn. So I can trace mine to them. They say they got it from a place called Dakota Garlic, which appears to be defunct. I’m trying to get in touch with the former owner to see if he can tell me where he got it (and so on).

So, does anyone have any more information or ideas about this garlic?

I started today harvesting my first few garlics.  The Asiatic Turban and Creole types always need to be harvested a little earlier that the others, so I started with these.  Even though there are several different varieties of garlic in the picture, they all look pretty similar, with the characteristic reddish skin of the Turban types.

They look really good this year.  They also smell wonderful!  The Turbans are among the most aromatic varieties, and among my favorites.  The only drawback is they do tend to fall apart in the ground if you harvest them too late and they are a little more susceptible to garlic rust.

Garlic rust is back.  I haven’t been paying close attention, but I think my plants have had it about a week now.  In about two weeks I’m going to begin harvesting, so it doesn’t matter any more.  The garlic will be fine.  Like I’ve posted about before, I sprayed dilute milk on the plants over the last few weeks, and I’m under the impression it help a lot delaying the rust and reducing it’s impact.

Sorry, it’s a little hard to see the forest for the trees in this picture, but this is one of my two corn patches.  This is Golden Bantum sweet corn, in plot number 17, and the plants are now about 5 ft tall with tassels on top.  I got these seeds from Bingenheimer Saatgut in Germany, and this is a locally (Germany) acclimated version of this variety.

Above is my other corn patch.  This is Strawberry Popcorn.  This is a Dutch Heirloom corn.  It may be heirloom other places too, but there was a time it was widely grown here.  Together with the Golden Bantum sweet corn, I’m growing this in search of corn varieties suited for my local climate.

I’m growing popcorn this year in part because I was inspired by Kathy at Skippy’s Garden, who had a good experience with popcorn last year.  Modern popcorn has had so much of it’s flavor bred out of it, then often packaged in microwavable bags.  Most of us (including me) don’t really know what popcorn really tastes like any more.  By growing it yourself, you get a chance to experience the flavor like it’s supposed to be.

Does anyone notice a strawberry theme creeping in here?

I’m really impressed with these white alpine strawberries Alan Bishop bred and sent me, and I think I keep getting more impressed by the day!  This is the second year, which is normally more productive than the first, but wow, these plants are really productive.  Normally alpine strawberries stop producing in the heat of the summer, but we’ve just had a really hot stretch of weather (30C/85F), and these strawberries have just kept going.  I’ve been short on water, and they have been in a dry raised bed, but they haven’t minded.

These strawberries are particularly nice, because the birds can’t find them as they aren’t red, and birds are normally a big problem in this way in my garden.

Finally, Strawberry Spinach…

Never mind the weeds!  Almost everything you see here that’s green in a weed, I just didn’t have a chance to remove them before taking this picture.  Strawberry Spinach is an old weed relative that at one time was widely grown in parts of Europe.  It has leaves that are a spinach substitute, and tasteless red berries that look like strawberries.  The plants have no relation to strawberries.

It’s my first time growing it, and it kind of got lost in the weeds, and I think I planted it a bit close because the plants never got very large and healthy.  In fact the leaves are now too brown to eat, so I don’t even know how they taste.  The red berries are great to look at however!

My garlic scapes are really late this year!

This is one of the first and it’s only emerged in the last few days.  We had a cold spring, and I used more straw mulch than usual this year.  Otherwise I haven’t been doing anything unusual.

No sign of garlic rust yet either!  The weather has been unusually cold, then very dry, so perhaps that’s working in my favor this year.

Of course you can have alliums most of the year but this is what’s mostly been coming out of the garden lately. Boy do they taste good!  I’ve started to notice my garden is getting especially full of perennial alliums.  Can you ever have too many alliums?

Now for the tour…

This is a new bed I’ve started this year, so it’s not very full yet.  In the front left I have the Utrecht Onion (local version of Allium dictuon) and the right is the Amish Onion.  In the middle left are a few plants of what I call Afghani Leek, because I got them from an Afghani gardener a few gardens down, but I think these are allium currat.  On the right is Mc Cullar’s White Onion, that I got from Stephen (stevil) in Norway last year, and directly behind that is allium ceruum or knodding onion also from Stephen and finally in the back left are Cook’s Multiplier also from Stephen.

While we’ve been eating both the Amish Onion and the Utrecht Onion already this year, the others will have to wait a few years before we have enough to both grow and eat.

In the back of this bed is Heritage Sweet White Multiplier from Søren, but originally from Paquebot in Wisconsin.  In the front are klimt shallots from Frank in Belgium, just starting to poke through the straw.

Here are the two victory onions I got several years ago from Søren.  They are really great, but haven’t been multiplying very much and all we’ve been doing is eating the leaves from time to time.  I’ve been growing them in tubs on our roof.  I think this year I have to try moving them to the garden, and see if they do better there.

These are He Shi Ko Bunching Onion from Baker Creek.  I just bought and planted these, and don’t know a lot about them.

I guess these don’t look a lot different from all the other pictures of onions here, but these are Egyptian Walking Onions.  I got these from Salt Spring Seeds in Canada years ago, and they’ve been going great.

Finally, these are a few of my roughly 1000 bulbs of garlic I grow each year.  I currently have about 60 varieties.

Can you tell I like onions and garlic?  Does anyone have anything else I might want, and want to trade??

This years garlic is all in.  The last was harvested yesterday, and I finished hanging the plants up to dry today.  This was a great year, and I have lots of large and healthy looking bulbs.

As well as regular garlic, this year I grew some bulbils.  Some I got from a fellow garlic grower, and some collected from my own plants.  It was interesting to see the differences in them, and you can see three different varieties in the picture above.  On top the two balls are Estonian Red, the middle a new variety simply called ‘Russian’, and the bottom a variety screaming for a new name called ‘W6 16275′.

You can see the largest plants are about 70-75cm long, about 1/2 that of a full sized plant and formed true but small bulbs with distinct cloves.  The other bulbils formed what you see on top, and resemble a single clove garlic bulb you sometimes see in speciality stores.

Some of the bulbils were so small, and the resulting plants no bigger than a blade of grass, that browned and died off very early.  These mostly got lost in my garden, and so will stay where they are and I’m sure they will come up next year.

In all, the bulbils were a lot more trouble than the rest of the garlic.  I couldn’t put as much straw on them as I did the rest of the garlic because the plants were too small.  This meant I had a lot more weeds, and pulling the weeds tended to disturb the plants.  I’m expecting to end up with full sized bulbs of garlic within a few years.

According to my notes, I harvested the following varieties of full sized garlic:

Antonnik*
Bai Pi Suan
Bogatyr*
Burgundy
Chilean Silver
Creole Red
Cuban Purple
Dauvaga*
Dominics
Elephant
Estonian Red
Finnish
Gazebo Grande
Georgia Fire
Georgian Crystal
German Porcelain
Germinador
GSF #65
Gypsy Red
Hungarian
Irkutsk*
Kallaves*
Krasnodar Red
Londerdel
Martin’s Heirloom
Maxi Top*
Metechi
Music
New Siberian*
Oosterdel
Oregon Blue
Persian Star
Pskem
Purple Glazer
Purple Haze
Purple Italian*
Pyong Vang
Red Toch
Rosewood
Russian Softneck
Shantung Purple
Siberian*
Silver Rose
Sprint*
Susan Delafield
Sweet Haven
Tuscan
Uzbek Turban
Vekak Czech
Vigor*
Vilnius
Wonha
Xian

Those marked with a * are my first year growing the variety, so I probably don’t have enough to share with others except by special request.  As far as the others go, I have some extras I could share if anyone is interested growing it.  Just send me an email and we’ll sort out the details.

For most people I would like you to pay for postage and packaging costs.  Within the Netherlands this is about €9.  Within Europe about €15 and outside of Europe about €25.  I accept payment in US Dollars, Euros and UK Pounds, maybe other currencies with prior agreement,  For a few of the varieties I have some bulbils available, which could be sent at much lower cost.  We can also discuss my only sending a few cloves or only one bulb, that may be at a lower cost.

Shipping is possible to the US as far as I know at the moment, but of course the risk of it not arriving is yours.  Honestly there is so much great garlic available in the US, please try to get it locally unless I have a very special variety you would like to have.  Shipping within Europe is certainly possible.  Other places depend on your local laws.

You can choose the varieties you want from the list above, but what most people do is give me an idea of how many different varieties they would like and I choose the best ones I have available.

If you’re planning to come to the Oxford meeting near the end of October, please get the garlic from me then, I will have several varieties with me and we can arrange any special requests in advance.

It really took a lot of time last year sending out garlic, so this year I will probably limit what I send in several ways.  First, I will probably only send out about 10 requests, first come first served.  Second, I will not accept any new orders after September 1st.  Third, for most people there is a limit of 5 varieties, but if you have special needs let me know.

If you get garlic from me, it would be very much appreciated if you grow it and share with others, especially if you have a blog and could offer it there.  It would save me a lot of trouble if other people helped send it to others.  If you have some to offer now, but don’t have a blog, please let me know and I’ll mention it here.

Most years the rust tends to appear in one place, then spreads out from there.  This year all my plants seem to have become infected at the same time.

It’s really hard to say if the milk I used made any difference.

Since I would normally begin harvesting in a week or two anyway, the rust is no real problem this year.

It’s the idea you are able to grow your own food without inputs or outputs of any kind, and without depending on anyone else for anything.  Without needing to get into your SUV and drive to Walmart to buy lumber, large bales of peat, mulch, sacks of fertilizers and so on.  Without needing to buy seeds from a single source because you grow hybrid varieties produced by a single company.  Without needing to use tap water, because you collect rainwater from your roof.  Without needing to use landfill space, because you recycle all of your own garden waste.  Without using power tools that run on fossil fuels, pollute the air and generate greenhouse gasses.  Without needing money to pay for it all.

Of course few people manage to achieve all of these things simultaneously, but by thinking about these things, doing the best you can given your personal circumstances and continuing to work on and improve the way you garden, you are taking an important first step.

A useful way to think about this is the way you spend money on your garden.  Growing fruits and vegetables should be almost free.  You will need some hand tools, if your ground is acidic some lime and maybe some potting soil from time to time, but everything else comes down to recycling things from your own garden and growing methods.  In the short term other things may be needed, for example you may decide to purchase a greenhouse and a shed.  You may have some specific problems in your garden that need to be addressed, one of the most common is soil lacking something that can be identified with a soil test or other methods.  You may have drainage problems that need to be fixed, and so on.  There aren’t many problems that require treatments or inputs beyond a year or two, and you should be thinking about garden sovereignty after that time.

When you buy food from the supermarket, you immediately find yourself in the middle of a complex tangle of commercial interests and politics. It begins because few people know how to grow their own food today, and in part it’s because food companies have invested tremendous effort into making modern foods convenient and cheap.  It’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to break.  Growing your own food is something that takes time to learn, and this lack of knowledge is really a serious problem.

Nearly all varieties of fruits and vegetables are patented and produced by one of five seed and chemical companies worldwide.  Since these same companies also sell chemicals, and they make more money if they sell chemicals with their seeds, so they breed them specifically to need these chemicals.  We are all familiar with GM Round Up ready varieties, and this is one very obvious example as Monsanto sells both Round Up and the Round Up ready varieties of seed.  There are many, many much more insidious examples of this for example cucumbers susceptible to mildew diseases or insect pests that require chemicals.

When farmers buy commercial seeds to plant, they get a list of required chemicals and a schedule for applying them.  Agriculture by numbers, if you like.  If farmers don’t do this the seed companies won’t support them.  It’s like doing something that invalidates a consumer warranty, even if it has nothing to do with some unrelated problem that needs to be fixed.  Under these circumstances, you can be assured farmers will apply all the required chemicals even if they know they aren’t needed.

If you buy certified organic food, you are still buying these commercial varieties.  In this case, you pay for the patents on the varieties and the work that went into them being designed to need chemicals, the extra trouble the farmer has to go through to grow them without chemicals, finally the very cumbersome associated paperwork and regulations intended to put small farmers and food producers at a disadvantage.  It’s a silly way to buy your food.

If you buy meat, this tangle gets even more intense, because first the grains are grown like I described above, then the animals are raised following similar lines of logic.

This is what we call the Green Revolution.

It came about because during the depression of the 30s and the war years that followed, there were food shortages and they need to ensure food companies who invested in improved plant varieties and production methods could be assured of profits.  They invested in plant varieties, chemicals and methods that made them as much money as possible and there were no other reasons for what they did.  There’s no reason to believe, if they hadn’t instead invested in organic agriculture without chemical and energy inputs, productions yields would be any lower today than they are now.

When politicians talk about providing ‘high quality’ seeds to the developing world to fight hunger, they are lying.  It’s as simple as that.  Instead what they are talking about is forcing a system of debt, dependence and environmental damage on hungry people who are in desperate need of developing their own food sovereignty.

If you go to a garden center and buy a normal commercial packet of seeds, you immediately put yourself in the middle of this tangle of required chemicals and politics.  It’s not that it’s impossible to grow nice things from commercial seed packets, but you’re starting off at a disadvantage.

If you think along the lines of food sovereignty, and avoid commercial seeds, you’re assured chemicals will not be needed to grow your plants.  Otherwise the situation is less clear.

In order to be sure to avoid the usual commercial tangle, if you want to purchase non-commercial seeds, you should purchase them from a company that specialized in them.  The best thing would be if you can find a local company, that hopefully produces seeds most suitable for your local climate.  In any case, be sure to look specifically for a company that specializes in non-commercial seeds.  The links page on this blog lists a number of these companies.

If you grow non-commercial seeds, another advantage is being able to save and replant seeds from these plants.  Saving seeds is also a skill that’s been lost with our current generation and takes some time to learn.  Many people start reading about how complicated it is and are quickly discouraged.  It really doesn’t have to be difficult.  Roger’s post that I linked to at the top, discusses growing garlic, something that doesn’t take any special skills to save and replant.  Beans, peas and lettuce are nearly as easy.  Just grow the plants and save the seeds — that’s it.  Other plants can be more complicated but a little research is all that’s needed to learn how to do it.  You must however start with non-commercial seeds, or the plants you get after saving your seeds will not be the same as the original parent plants.

Once you make the decision to start saving your seeds, you have access to the wonderful world of seed exchanges.  These are fellow gardeners who also save their own seeds, and often have very special varieties of plants on offer.  While some of these gardeners are happy to provide their seeds to anyone and everyone, most really expect you to have the intention of saving and regrowing them, so it’s best to at least have the intention of doing this before getting involved in trading this way.  If you’re interested in offering or receiving non-commercial seeds, have a look at the Bloggers Seed Netork page.

Aim for food sovereignty.  Don’t add anything unnecessarily to your garden.  Get away from the mindset of being a farmer, and needing a box of this and a bottle of that.  Don’t give your money to the wrong companies.  Grow the right varieties.  Take care of our planet and your health, at the same time you grow fresh fruits and vegetables in your own garden.

Garlic rust is very much on my mind at the moment.  Last year around this time it appeared on my garlic, and it just appeared on Gintoino’s garlic in Portugal.

Søren had a good suggestion last year, spraying his garlic with diluted milk, and I’ve decided to try it this year.  I’m mixing it about 1:5 with water, only because it’s most convenient to buy milk by the liter here and that’s what works well to fill my spray bottle and cover the plants.  I understand nonfat milk is the best to use, but this is a special purchase here and hard to find reasonably priced, so I’m using lowfat instead.  I’ve been doing this once a week for the last two weeks, and will keep doing it about this often or after it rains, until it seems pointless to continue.

There isn’t a practical way for me to do anything close to a scientific study here, with a control section of my garden, because once I have garlic rust anywhere it will spread quickly.

What I understand is garlic rust occurs at a time of high humidity, but not when the plants are wet.  In my own experience, I see it break out in my garden most often when the days are warm, the nights cool and the humidity is high.  Because it seems to be so tied to weather conditions, it doesn’t seem like comparing the date I got it last year with the date I get it this year is a good comparison.

Anyway, to help me figure out if the milk is helping, I would appreciate if anyone reading this who has garlic in their garden will tell me if and when they get rust this year.

Rust is primarily a European plant disease, so those of you in North America probably won’t see it.

Rust is not usually a deadly disease for garlic, but it does reduce the harvest and causes the plants to die prematurely.  Delaying the appearence is what’s really important, because an infection two weeks earlier or later can mean the difference between a more or less normal harvest or one that has to be made early.

Do you see it there in the middle?

Here’s a closer look…

Here’s the whole thing.

It the past I’ve had hedgehogs, birds nests, wasps even ants, but I’ve never before had a duck’s nest in my garden.  Snuggled comfortably between the Red Toch and the Russian Softneck, with it’s home in the straw.  Three eggs are waiting with the next generation inside.

I discovered her a few days ago, after being in the garden for a few hours.  Completely unaware of her, I got a little too close causing her to fly away in a panic.  I don’t know who was more frightened, her or me as a duck suddenly took off almost vertically from my garden about a meter from where I was standing.

I have not seen any slugs or snails this year!  It could just be luck, but I think I’ve already encountered the first benefit of having a resident garden duck.  I’ve seen other garden bloggers joke about a slug or snail problem really only being a matter of a duck deficiency.  Well I can assure you, I have no such problem!

According to what I’ve read on the Internet, duck eggs take about a month to hatch, so for the next several weeks she and I will both have to share the garden space.  Fortunately she picked a part of the garden I don’t need to go into often these days.

So I started asparagus last year from seed.  There’s not a lot of information about this on the Internet, and what’s there is often conflicting.  I thought I would do a post here about some of the things I’ve learned.

I decided to start my asparagus from seed, because crowns here tend to be overpriced and of unnamed varieties.  I wanted to grow OP varieties, so getting seeds seemed the best way to get started.  When you start asparagus from crowns, you need to wait 2 years before you get a normal harvest, and with seeds you have to wait an additional year.  I was prepared to wait 3 years for a normal harvest.

Asparagus likes rich ground, and I discovered last year I had problems with not enough nitrogen in my garden.  I decided to address this by planting beans as companion plants with the asparagus.  This may not have been the best decision, because in the first year the asparagus plants were very small and weak, and the beans grew over and crowded them.  Many of the asparagus plants didn’t survive, and this may have been part of the problem.

When I started this I was under the impression most of my asparagus plants would survive, and in any case I was expecting it to be black and white, either they would survive or not.  I planted 2 beds with 12 plants each, expecting to perhaps lose a couple of plants in each bed.  This is certainly not what happened.

What happened was different asparagus plants grew with different degrees of success, and quite a few simply died after the first year.  It’s not completely clear how many survived, but it’s certainly less than 50% and many that are still around don’t look healthy and strong.  A few of the plants are doing fine, like the one in the picture above.

Another one of the issues I’m aware of is there are male and female plants.  I’m quite happy to have a few female plants in my garden, because I would like to have seeds for future planting, but most people only want male plants as they produce better asparagus spears.  I’m under the impression when you buy crowns, they’ve usually been sexed and are always male.

I also started my seeds indoors.  I’m under the impression this wasn’t necessary and I didn’t really gain anything by doing it.

Lessons

Starting asparagus from seed is certainly possible, but it’s a little bit more trouble.

I suggest planting seeds with about 6in (15cm) spacing in rows 1ft (30cm) apart.  For the first year plan on growing crowns for transplant, so don’t worry too much about providing the perfect spot for the plants.  Plant at least 4-5 times as many plants as you expect to need crowns for.  You will want to be able to pick the best and strongest plants for transplanting, and will probably want to discard female plants.  You can direct seed in the garden, about 2 weeks before the last frost date in your area.  Germination rates can be low, so consider sowing more thickly and thinning out the plants later.

The following spring, transplant the crowns.  Soilman recently did a great video on this.

I’ve posted a couple of times about the yacon plants I grew this year with stem tubers from my friend Frank in Belgium.  Of all of my Lost Crops of the Incas, this may have turned out to be the most interesting.

In the picture above you see the large tuber on the right, weighing in at about a kilogram.  The white things you see on the left are ‘yacón chips’, made by slicing the tuber thinly and drying the pieces in the dehydrator.  The small thing on the bottom right is a small cluster of three stem tubers, one of which has started growing already.

This plant is incredibly productive.  Supposedly it’s three times as productive as potatoes in the same space, and each plant yields about 10Kg of tubers!  Partly as a result, the plants take up a lot of space in the garden.  Each plant needs 90-100cm is all directions.  The tops of the plants are quite large as well, and can shade other nearby plants.  Growing the plants in a block, can help them provide support for one another, and in any case some extra support may be needed.  In my garden they grew to about 1.5m in height.

The basic procedure is to start growing the stem tuber indoors in February, then plant out after the last frost date.  When starting them indoors, keep in mind the plants will grow pretty quickly, so be sure to give them a large enough pot.  The first frost in the fall will kill the tops of the plants, which are quite frost tender, and they will shrivel soon afterwards.  You can then cut the stem at about 20cm from the ground and carefully dig up the roots.  The roots are very easily damaged, so be careful when digging them.  If you don’t get a frost before the winter solstice, you should probably dig the plants around then anyway.

After digging up the plant, place it in a wooden or plastic container with some holes at the bottom to let water drain.  It’s probably best not to disturb the tubers by washing them.  Place the plants in a root cellar or unheated room, protected from frost.  Leave uncovered and don’t eat for at least the first month, because in this time the tubers will become sweeter.  After the first month, you can cover the tubers with sand or peat if you want, but I didn’t find this necessary.  In any case you do need to keep them from drying out too much, and I did this by covering them loosely with a damp towel.  Simply eat tubers over the course of the winter as desired, and in February harvest the stem tubers for next years plants.

Eating

The taste is nice, but not really outstanding.  In fact the biggest problem I had was Steph doesn’t care for it at all, so I was stuck eating both of the plants I grew on my own, and that was just too much for me.  I’ve still only eaten about half of what I grew, but it’s still storing well.  I’ve even given some of it away already.

It’s a bit of a problem that most of the tubers seem to weigh more than a kilo, too much for just me to eat, and they don’t store well after being cut open.

The skin is a little bitter, so I think most people will prefer to peel it.  It is nice raw, crispy juicy with the taste of a melon but not so intense.  It is very high in sugar, but not ordinary sugars.

It can also be sauteed in butter, until the sugar carmelizes a bit.  This is probably my favorite way to eat it.

I understand it can also be added to stirfrys, but I haven’t tried this.  I don’t like sweet things in my stirfrys, and since Steph won’t eat it I would have to make a one person stirfry, which I don’t do often anyway.

You can make yacón chips, like in the picture above by putting it in a dehydrator.  I didn’t pretreat the yacón before drying it, just sliced it thinly.  The taste of the chips is similar to dried fruit, perhaps well suited as an exotic party snack.  The taste becomes more intense after drying.  Time will tell if I still like eating the chips in a few months…

Beyond this you can make yacón wine, and there are some companies selling yacón syrup.  I understand in theory at least, it has the potential to be a good plant to make biofuel from, because the sugars can easily be converted to alcohol.

Because the sugar is not ‘real’ sugar, it tends to leave you a little unsatisfied after eating it.  I understand the special sugars can also give you wind if you eat too much, but I don’t seem to have that problem.  Eating too much can give you a real empty/full feeling.

Tubers Available!

Okay, so if after reading this you are convinced you want to try growing it, you’re in luck because I have some stem tubers available.

I’m a little concerned about making an offer like this, because among other things there’s been lots of interest expressed over the Internet and a lot of people are looking for tubers.  Real Seeds in the UK just reported they had a crop failure this year, so I seem to be the only source in Europe at the moment!  I don’t have enough to send out hundreds and hundreds of stem tubers, and I’m probably going to disappoint a lot of you who ask for some.  I probably only have 30 or 40 in total, and I’ll probably send most people who ask 2 of them.

At this point I don’t know for sure how many I have, and I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I start cutting the stem tubers off in a couple of weeks.  I would like to start collecting a list of people who are interested, so if you want some please send me an email now.  In the email please be sure to give me your address.  One way or another I will get back to you and let you know.

I’ve already promised a number of people I would send them tubers, and they have first priority.  After this, I will give priority to people who are closest to me geographically and/or express an intent to reoffer tubers next year via the Blogger Seed Network.  After this, I’ll give people who participate in this blog with comments or links from their own blogs.  After that it will be first come first served.

If I’ve already talked to you and said I would send you some tubers, I will send you an email in the next day or two.  If you don’t get an email, please get in touch.  My memory for this kind of thing is not very good!