chinese yams and aerial blulbs

the yam vine twining around the hopi blue maize made me stop and take a good look at the yam vines...what i found didn't startle me the way the gamagrass has this season but it still has me thinking i will be culling yams next spring...the plants vined exuberantly this season and their production of aerial bulbs has lived up to the vines' promise...hundreds of them in single file and in bunches like grapes...it's another indication of just how much energy plants put into reproduction...chinese yam bulbs aren't edible like, say, an air potato...which is part of why they'll never be a perennial staple...the edible part is about two or three feet underground ( and believe me this year i will be harvesting them...all these bulbs are at least partly my responsibility since i declined to harvest them last fall...i don't think i want them to have that much energy next spring ) and doesn't amount to more than a pound or two per plant...a lot of work to harvest a little food and you have to dig up the whole garden almost ( just like a thorough jerusalem artichoke harvest which is also in the cards )so it's only a staple if you eat the reproductive system since that's where all the plant's energy is expended... tuberous perennials outproduce rootstock perennials just about any time...i'll show you the results sometime next month.