more tubers

it's a long weekend and the trip to campus was just the first round of plant and garden adventures that will be going on...when i got home it was time to move on and the so i picked yacon as the next project...i've had these plants living in peat pots waiting for warmer weather since they are cold intolerant ( top two photos )...you can see ( if you look closely enough ) that they were pot bound in the third photo, so i freed them and planted them in some large planters to allow tuber growth...they are a distant relative of the jerusalem artichokes just across the way in the yard and will produce large, sweetish tubers that are composed of inulin just like the suinchokes but without the jerusalem artichoke's nutritional value...look at them as a lot like watermelon...and they don't propagate from the tubers...rather from cuttings form the base of the plant...that combined with the long ( six to seven month )season means they are prime basement candidates for both finishing and propagation...more lights and cutting everywhere...well..it keeps me off the streets, right? along with the mashua and at least five varieties of spuds ( who knows what is in some of those containers ? ) it will be tuber city here again this year...not complaining...experimenting...and there will be much more of that all over before the season is done...many more posts...new adventures...might even learn something along the way...who could complain about that?...oh yeah...i put cages around the tomatoes too.