Seeking Yacon, Mashua, Oca, bright Andean Tubers

[Deleted]

Hi. This is my first post.

I've been asked to volunteer as a planner for community gardens, next year.

I registered at your forums, because I was attracted to beautiful pics of purple yacon, linked at images.google, but the thread was from '09.

I'm having a difficult time, finding brighter colors of Andean root crops from the US:

Achira (Canna edulis)
Arracacha (Arracacia xanthorrhiza)
Maca (Lepidium meyenii)
Mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum)
Mauka (Mirabilis expansa)
Oca (Oxalis tuberosa )
Potato (Solanum tuberosum)
Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus, tuberosum )
Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius)
Yuca (Manihot esculenta)

Would you tell me how you've ordered these, or where I could buy some?

I have:
Cash
Paypal
Some seeds to barter (list changes by season)

I'm degzing at yahoo

Thanks very much for your help.

[atash]

Not all of the crops listed are "Andean", and not all have the same growing requirements. Manihot esculenta in particular is from the tropical lowlands and requires more heat than the others.

Achira is grown at some elevation but is not particularly suited to cool climates. It's just plain old Canna edulis. Loves heat and humidity.

Perhaps you already realize that some of the crops listed are prone to day-length sensitivities. Oca and Ulluco tuberize during short days, outside of the tropics they will tend to tuberize very late in the year, starting September in my part of the world.

I doubt you will be able to find them all in one place. We will have

Mashua
Oca
Potato
Ulluco

later in the year, after they have been harvested. Inquire at

help AT newworldcrops.com

You could visit our website (www.newworldcrops.com) but they won't be listed yet, except the potatoes, and that list is getting short due to sell-outs.

As far as potatoes go, you've hit the motherload. We've got just about every color of potato there is, including exotic ones like "Fuchsia", florescent purple, and beet red. Inside and out, or contrasting skin and interior colors too.

Only one color of Ulluco, the most common color, short of a florescent hot pink polka-dots.

Oca mostly in shades of red with a very few yellows.

Only one color of Mashua (off-white).

Have a single specimen of Yacon so that will not be available. Will be growing out some Maca but won't be ready this year. We had bad weather to deal with.

Maca is traditionally for the boys, and mashua for the girls. Boys don't traditionally eat mashua. Reputedly antagonistic to male hormones. There are papers on the internet claiming it will make male rodents go impotent.

[Deleted]

I'll be taking a very good look at that link, this afternoon, thanks.

We get light freezes in southern California (USDA Zone 9), but a greenhouse is in the works. If possible, I would like to produce small plants, by Spring.

Later on, I believe the length of our days will change 3-4 hours, throughout the year.

Mashua was also given to native soldiers, to help them forget their wives on long campaigns. In spite of the lab rat experiments, I read that mashua has more of a "balancing" effect on testosterone, when the (secondary?) hormone is overproduced. So, the root was informally prescribed to men with prostate difficulties.

Being that it's the Internet Age, several people in South America were able to respond to my ads, seemingly out of casual curiosity. They claim that bright tubers are available in specialty markets, and they offer to go, only to trail off.

[spacecase0]

I found OCA and Yacon at my local organic grocery store in berkeley
I have OCA everywhere this year...
but it sure is not bright colors

[Deleted]

Different colors of oca:

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

These pictures are from the Peace Seeds catalog, run by Alan Kapuler in Oregon. You might try getting them from him.

www.peaceseeds.cn/PSList11.htm
www.peaceseeds.com/

[spacecase0]

that is where I got my OCA from
I don't remember any dark red ones from my harvest...
I wonder if the different colors grow in different conditions ?
maybe I was missing the dark red ones happy place

what is "OAC Ares" ?

[castanea]

Aug 8, 2011 21:25:36 GMT -5 spacecase0 said:

that is where I got my OCA from
I don't remember any dark red ones from my harvest...
I wonder if the different colors grow in different conditions ?
maybe I was missing the dark red ones happy place

what is "OAC Ares" ?

In my experience, the colors become washed out under hotter growing conditions

[Deleted]

Excellent referral, keen.

Please keep sending if you got them, guys.

[atash]

How close are you to the ocean down in southern California? The immediate coastal area should be able to grow many of these crops quite well, and day-length will be less of problem for you as for me.

Oca can tolerate a light frost. Ulluco maybe a little less; it has tender succulent foliage, but it doesn't mind fairly cool temps.

Potatoes mostly don't like frost though it doesn't usually kill them as long as it doesn't get down to the tubers. However, I am on a quest for frost-resistant potatoes--both tubers AND foliage... Some species have frost-resistant foliage due to living at very high elevations. Oddly this is more common among the tropical species than temperate species--but that sort of makes sense--in temperate climates they go dormant in frosty weather, whereas at very high elevations in the tropics they have to put up with brief frost on some nights year-round.

First picture of keen101's to me looks like a mix of Oca and Mashua. I have probably all those colors.

Ullucos come in more colors than I have.

Oh, in addition to "Europeanized" potatoes, Tom has some varieties that look more like traditional Andean varieties. Bumpy, elongated shapes, long rhizomes, more wild looking. He probably still has some seed left in stock that he could sell you now if you're anxious to get started.

[Deleted]

I'm not close enough to the ocean to have beach weather, at ~2700ft. i live in a pass between two mountains. Toward the east is Death Valley, toward the south is the Palm Springs aerial tram way, toward the west is the Pacific ocean, and toward the north is Big Bear.

Depending on which way the wind blows, we can smell snow and pines, desert herbs, annual grass fires, or the ocean.

In unusual years, the weather can range from 20-120F, but it's usually closer to 50-85F.

[Deleted]

FYI --
help AT newworldcrops.com confirms that they do have interesting variety, but they're too busy to catalog it.

[atash]

Aug 9, 2011 9:42:05 GMT -5 @degzing said:

FYI --
help AT newworldcrops.com confirms that they do have interesting variety, but they're too busy to catalog it.

What the old boy meant was that more varieties of TPS are coming on-line as soon as he's had time to clean them, dry them, catalog them, pack them, come up with descriptions, and have me list them. He has been known to drop everything and respond to specific ad-hoc customer inquiries, but he can't do that anymore because then other people would be left waiting.

There is still some TPS seed left over from this year, and fresh tubers, that will need some time to break dormancy, are already being harvested, and more are ready for harvest from day to day.

When we have a good idea what our complete harvest will look like, we'll start photographing and posting photos, to give you a better idea what the colors of flesh and skin look like.

Here's a photo I shot about a month ago:



That's the color INSIDE AND OUT. ;D

This is what the harvest of a single Oca plant looks like:



Notice they're a little smaller than those tropical-grown ones. That's because they develop late in the year, and only for a few months, at 47.5 degrees north latitude.

[spacecase0]

I would love to get some seeds for that bright color potato when they are available
they look like fun,
what do they taste like ?

[atash]

Hello, Spacecase, thank you. They should be a fairly nice smooth texture and full potato flavor, but proof is in the eating. Remind me come harvest time in a few more months. Or sign up for our newsletter and we'll announce our harvest results.

They are beautiful, but something about potatoes and anthrocyanins means the pigment is not heat-stable. As soon as I have enough I would like to experiment to see what is the best way to preserve the pigments, so that you get clearer colors when cooked. I have a feeling that temperature and pH are involved. Probably oxygen too.

The yellow (some almost orange) ones keep their color; good tough carotenoids.