The smallest of the tubers in yesterday’s dinner (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=9577) was so-called rice lily or riceroot (Fritillaria camschatensis), small (but many) sweet tasting tubers that often lie right on the surface all winter! One of the hardiest plants found in Western North America from Oregon to Alaska, Northern Japan and the Russian Far East…and quite a common ornamental for its almost black flowers…
The ingredients list for last night’s extreme green pasta sauce ended at 57 (all collected inside in the living areas or the cellar stores), which together with Sunday’s 56 variety salad (all collected outside before the snow obscured everything) means I’m already over 113 veggies for 2017! Will this be the year my world record salad will be smashed?
With the fantasy salad queen from Naturplanteskolen on a visit to Malvik’s Extreme Salad Man, we just had to combine forces and created a diversity salad for dinner..and with the mild weather, we managed 56 different salad plants “foraged”, all outside from the garden……not bad for 1st January at 63.5N!!
I was potting up ocas and ullucos outside this afternoon (to force for winter greens) and there was a sudden hail storm . The pots are brought inside and I use the edible shoots from the tubers all winter!
The last two days of 2016 were basically dull stormy days here in Malvik, but then suddenly the gaps in the clouds were illuminated by amazing rainbow-like high altitude clouds known as nacreous or mother of pearl clouds and as they are best seen when the sun is just below the horizon (which it is all day long here), the display lasted most of the day until it clouded over! I’ve never seen this phenomenon before…it requires special weather conditions for these 15-25 km high polar stratospheric clouds to form….
A really memorable finale to 2016, better than any fireworks!!
Yacon (Polymnia edulis/Smallanthus sonchifolius) also gives higher yields when grown on inside until the end of the year in a large pot; however, it is much less day length sensitive than ulluco and oca…when I had a cold greenhouse, yacon would give at least as good a yield as this by October…
The sweet tasting tubers are becoming quite popular in recent years! Yacon is in the Asteraceae, the roots containing inulin like its edible tubered cousins Jerusalem artichoke and Dahlia.
The yacon was moved into my living room which is heated…about 2/3 of the leaves froze off before harvest, but it resprouted from the base and continued flowering….
The propagules were sprouting (small nodules used to start next year’s plants)
As the psychedelic (colour not effect) Andean tubers Oca (Oxalis tuberosa), Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus) and Achira (Canna edulis) benefit from a longer season than I can give them outside, I grow them in buckets which I bring inside and harvest around Xmas time for a colourful christmas dinner…so here’s an album of this year’s harvest!
I was very surprised by one of the best ulluco harvests here, despite the leaves being mostly frozen off before moving the pots inside and not regrowing…I don’t understand…
Each of the groups correspond to one bucket! The yellow tubers at 2 o’clock are from a bucket grown for two years to see if they would grow any bigger…otherwise yellow has the smallest tubers.
I’ve never grown anything like this size of ulluco before, similarly the white with pink dots variety were significantly bigger than normal…strange as all my Ullucos were severely frosted before I brought them inside and didn’t regrow inside…
A lot of variation in yield again this year in my ocas, here are 7 groups corresponding to 7 buckets…the large yellow at bottom right looked very promising but there were only two tubers :( The two groups at bottom left and centre were mixed varieties forced for the leaves last winter and then left to grow on…
For my daughter Avellana Wood who has been working hard around the house the last few days!
Tipping the bucket upside down, the tubers are revealed :)
I gave up sugar poison completely over 10 years ago, apart from the once a year suck on my living room sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) :) This is a hardy cultivar from Raglan in New Zealand although I grow it indoors all year!
. The pots are brought inside and I use the edible shoots from the tubers all winter!
