Andean vegetables 2015

[billw]

Great work, Philip! The plants look very healthy. You have the best germination percentage by far (of five people I sent seed to, we have 0% x 3, mine is 1.3%, and yours is about 4.3%, right?) so hopefully we have learned something from that.

I've had four new seedlings in the past 10 days, so it seems that cool, wet weather is better for ulluco sprouting. That doesn't come as a huge surprise.

[philip]

I tried the same method i use for sorbus domestica. Stratification for 100 days in a fridge in sand with 15 percent humidity. It may be a way to increase germination a bit or maybe i was just lucky.
I can't wait for these new ullucos to tuberise.

[steev]

I'm still not clear: the ulloco does NOT need any crown on the tuber to grow (after a bit to dry the break, I suppose); just crack 'em off and re-plant?

[billw]

Are we talking about mauka, Steev? Ulluco is just a tuber; you replant the whole thing. With mauka, the actual root is mostly a storage organ. The crown and lower pieces of the stem are the best parts for propagation. You can cut the roots off and just replant the crown, but even easier is to replant the caudices. The lower stem gets very thick, like a string of sausages. You can just snap them apart and stick them in the ground and they'll root pretty easily.

[philip]

One seed grown ulluco has masses of flowers. I never saw so many on an ulluco plant. But.... no seeds this year.
It's past autumn equinox so plants are tuberising now.
Sorry for the bad picture

[billw]

I seem to have cracked the yacon seed code this year.  As is so often the case, it is actually not that difficult once you know the tricks.

1. You must have more than one variety.

2. Those varieties must flower at the same time.

3. The varieties must have compatible genetics (some are octaploid and some dodecaploid).

4. The earliest varieties require a minimum of 160 days to flower and seeds take 20 days to mature after pollination, so you need a minimum frost-free season of 180 days to get seed.  You probably realistically need at least 210 days to get a useful quantity, since yacon flowering starts slowly.

5. The flowers must be kept dry and warm in order to liberate pollen.  Clear plastic bags placed over the flowers in the morning make it possible to get pollen with a brush in the early afternoon.

Hand pollinated flower heads of the variety Bekya produce about 2 mature seeds on average.  The better of the two seedlings that we grew this year produces about five seeds per flower head.  Every other variety is a bit less than one seed per flower.

Yacon may actually turn out to be one of the easiest of the Andean crops to get seed from if you are in the right climate.

You can see five mature seeds in the middle of the picture, compared to all the purple seeds, which aren't viable and will shrivel when they dry.

[billw]

One of the ulluco seedlings has provided a little preview in the form of aerial tubers. It looks like this variety will produce round, light yellow tubers with slight pink color at the eyes.  Now I don't have to worry that none of the plants will produce tubers anymore. 

[billw]

The first four of the new ullucos have now all provided some preview tubers. Still about a month before I harvest them, but the survival of these varieties at least seems ensured.



These look quite a bit like the possible parent varieties, which is unsurprising since ulluco is diploid.  It will be really interesting to see the results next year, when I am sowing seed entirely from controlled crosses.

[richardw]

Very interesting Bill.
Got to have the right climate alright, my Yacon doesn't even flower for me

[khoomeizhi]

speaking of yacon -

the variety of yacon i've been growing for years has never flowered for me, but the variety i got from bill this year did - a bit too late, since we've had our first couple hard frosts now.

bill - do some varieties flower and some not for you, do they all, does any one variety start earlier than the others...what's your experience been between varieties?

[billw]

Almost every variety flowered this year. Usually they don't start until October, but the unusually warm weather got them going early I think.

www.cultivariable.com/wiki/index.php/Yacon_Flowering_2015

I had some very good luck with seed until the weather turned wet. At that point, they kept flowering but didn't set any seed. Those flowers need to be dry. Happily, I have a solution for that:

[billw]

The first of the new yacons turned out to be pretty good. 7.6 pound harvest in its seedling year. It is quite similar to the variety New Zealand from orflo; no idea if it is related though.

[billw]

Yacon seedlings. I sowed 980 seeds of 7 varieties on November 11. 19 have germinated. 8 died shortly after germinating and another four are seriously malformed and probably won't make it. Seed size correlates very strongly with seedling health; varieties that produce small seeds have a majority of badly malformed seedlings. So far, I have seven promising seedlings, four from Bekya at left, then two from New Zealand, and one from Quinault. There has been no germination in a week, but I had one seedling germinate several months after sowing this year, so I still hope for more. If you grow yacon and have more than one variety, you should really try making some crosses and collecting seed - at this rate, it is going to take a lot of people producing a lot of seed to make progress.

[raymondo]

Well done billw. Great that you're able to add a bit more diversity to this crop. I enjoy yacon but it has never flowered in my garden.

[richardw]

Same here Ray, i wonder why it wont flower.

Good work Bill