Category: Garden

I grew two kinds of yacón this year.  The first you see on the right is an unnamed variety with brown roots, which seems to be the most common kind at the moment.  The other variety, on the left, is called yacón morado and has red roots.  You can see yacón morado also has reddish leaves.

The unnamed variety is significantly more productive, yielding around twice what the yacón morado does, or about 10Kg per plant.

Yacón morado has an abundance of small flowers throughout most of the summer.  While the unnamed variety can bloom from time to time, it usually only does so as a result of some kind of stress.

The flowers also attracted large numbers of bees, but for whatever reason every time I was ready with the camera all the bees went away.

Here are the harvested roots.  Either something changed in the way it grew, or perhaps I was a little rushed during harvest, but it seems like the tubers broke off more readily this year during harvest.  Anyway, the one sure thing about yacón is the harvest is big, so even with a few pieces broken off there’s still lots left.  I’m not sure if the broken off pieces will rot before I have a chance to eat them or not.

I also haven’t had a chance to taste these two varieties side by side, so I’m not sure if the flavors are different.

For me this is the year to start getting into fruit tree grafting.  I’ve purchased a few fruit trees already grafted onto rootstock, but also extra rootstock, a grafting knife and grafting wax.  I hope in the coming years to start trading scion wood with others, and doing my own grafts.

I’ve already had an offer of a trade from Søren!

If any of you have tips, tricks or favorite fruit tree varieties, I’d love to hear.

By the way, I bought my fruit trees from Blackmoor Fruit Nursery in the UK, and so far I’m a very satisfied customer.  Everything arrived in very good condition, and the varieties they offer are interesting ones, and not just commercial ones.  For me it’s very important they were willing to ship to mainland Europe, as not all nurseries in the UK will do that.

I even changed my order in the middle of everything, something not a lot of online companies appreciate.  It didn’t phase them a bit, and my order arrived just as I expected it.  If you live in the UK or mainland Europe, I would recommend them as a place to look for soft fruit and fruit trees.

This was a fun plant to grow this past year.  I purchased seeds from Baker Creek, who highly recommended them.

It’s called a tomato, but is a totally different species and has little to do with normal tomatoes aside from the color of the ripened fruit.  It should grow in almost any climate, and doesn’t have any special needs.

I suspect in a hotter climate the fruit is a little sweeter, but it was perfectly edible grown in my temperate garden.  The fruits were a little on the seedy side, which makes for easier seed saving, but detracted from the taste.

The plants were not very productive, and honestly I would consider them more of a novelty than anything else.

The really pronounced feature of this plant were the thorns, covering nearly the entire plant.  The fruits were enclosed in a sort of pod covered with thorns, which dried up and peeled away as the fruit ripened, leaving a luscious tasty fruit ready to be (carefully) picked.  This plant really teaches you patience as a gardener, as attempting to harvest a less than completely ripe fruit can be a painful experience!

If anyone is interested, I have some seeds of this available.