Post by ottawagardener on Nov 10, 2014 10:27:16 GMT -5
A bunch of us on Facebook (Radix's forum) have been posting pictures of Oca growing in unreasonable areas like Eastern Ontario and Manitoba (yes the prairies). Anyhow, here are my results. This is my second attempt btw. My first ended up with tuber grubs and sadness… though it did demonstrate that Oca can take some amount of drought 
Anyhow, most of these are seed grown oca, placed on the shady edge of my garlic row. My rows are raised so these were in a slight trench. The soil in this area is very sandy so does not hold well to moisture, heat, or frost but conversely experiences faster temp fluctuations. I started in mid-winter from seed and transplanted in late May. They often looked unhappy in summer heat though those exposed to the most heat units - despite wilting heavily - also had the highest yield.
We had one hard frost in September and several mild patchy frosts. I covered with clear plastic totes - sometimes packed with leaves depending on the level of frost. My goal was to harvest mid-November. Cold temps seem to be settling around the end of the first week of November so I dug then on the 6th. In retrospect, I should have protected them less from frost to take advantage of the much mentioned mild frost tuberizing effect. As it is, I did not remove tubers from foliage or clean dirt from around tubers. Instead I packed them into plastic bags in a plastic tote and covered with a frost blanket and left them in my garage. My intent (we'll see) is to allow for the energy in the fleshy stems to be redirected into the tubers. I'll report back on that though so far they are perky sitting in the cold garage.
For 2015, I plan on using a shallow, wide trench for growing and using a covered wide board to protect against the earliest frosts. As it is, I was encouraged by the results.
Oca plant late fall:
My less than sophisticated frost protection system. I would protect less next year:
One of the nicest seed grown plants:
Better sense of scale. Not giants but hoping for some improvement next year clonally. I had no flowers.
Popular variety, Sunset:
Long pinkish one, probably not well adapted for here.
All yellow. I also got an all red but that's enough pictures!
Anyhow, most of these are seed grown oca, placed on the shady edge of my garlic row. My rows are raised so these were in a slight trench. The soil in this area is very sandy so does not hold well to moisture, heat, or frost but conversely experiences faster temp fluctuations. I started in mid-winter from seed and transplanted in late May. They often looked unhappy in summer heat though those exposed to the most heat units - despite wilting heavily - also had the highest yield.
We had one hard frost in September and several mild patchy frosts. I covered with clear plastic totes - sometimes packed with leaves depending on the level of frost. My goal was to harvest mid-November. Cold temps seem to be settling around the end of the first week of November so I dug then on the 6th. In retrospect, I should have protected them less from frost to take advantage of the much mentioned mild frost tuberizing effect. As it is, I did not remove tubers from foliage or clean dirt from around tubers. Instead I packed them into plastic bags in a plastic tote and covered with a frost blanket and left them in my garage. My intent (we'll see) is to allow for the energy in the fleshy stems to be redirected into the tubers. I'll report back on that though so far they are perky sitting in the cold garage.
For 2015, I plan on using a shallow, wide trench for growing and using a covered wide board to protect against the earliest frosts. As it is, I was encouraged by the results.
Oca plant late fall:
My less than sophisticated frost protection system. I would protect less next year:
One of the nicest seed grown plants:
Better sense of scale. Not giants but hoping for some improvement next year clonally. I had no flowers.
Popular variety, Sunset:
Long pinkish one, probably not well adapted for here.
All yellow. I also got an all red but that's enough pictures!
