{"id":30807,"date":"2022-12-26T12:10:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T11:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=30807"},"modified":"2022-12-26T12:35:13","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T11:35:13","slug":"oca-harvest-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=30807","title":{"rendered":"Oca harvest 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Xmas isn’t Xmas without Oca and a hoard of other tubers, served with the traditional nut roast. Pre-xmas preparations includes the annual oca harvest. Oca (Oxalis tuberosa<\/em>) is a short day root crop hailing from the central and southern Andes. When harvested at the first frosts, yields are poor, the plants needing a long mild autumn to fatten up the tubers for the festive season. I therefore grow my oca in large buckets which we bring into the extension to the house at the first hard frosts which was late October this year. We don’t heat the extension which is normally a fairly constant 5-10C in winter and hence a good place to store vegetables and other plants like my bay tree (Laurus nobilis<\/em>). There’s no sunlight and I don’t use artificial light so there’s no diurnal variation in temperature either. The oca plants don’t grow vegetatively, but miraculously the tubers do grow over the few weeks to harvest:<\/p>\n