New Zealand Yam Harvest - Oca

I know I've talked before on my love of this unusual tuber. It's starchy, tasty, easy to grow. So what's not to love?

Well I think the main reason it's not taken off is due to the unpredictable harvests. Sometimes you can harvest bucket fulls from half a dozen plants and sometime you might just get a handful. 

Starting Oca In The Greenhouse

If you've read my previous post you'll know I've joined the Guild Of Oca Breeders to try help (in a small way) to develop a new food crop that is viable in the northern hemisphere. 

Friday night I managed to get the ones they'd sent me planted. 

For the experiment I'm involved in they're meant to be started on the 21st of March but the weather wasn't favourable so a few days doesn't matter. The three types above are for the destructive harvest experiment. They're to be planted out and then one from each batch harvested and weighed on a set date, once a month starting in September and then yields can be compared to the length of day.

I also got sent the observer pack with 12 genetically different types of New Zealand yam they've grown before. I loved the variation of the tubers with some great shapes and colours. Each has it's own number so it's important to label them well encase any stock is wanted for future breeding or experiments. 

I've set a side what I think is quite a bit of space to grow these (four beds in fact) but compared to what some people are growing for the guild it's a very small amount!

Should be interesting to see how they all compare.

Who else is growing Oca this year?

The Guild Of Oca Breeders

If you read this blog then you'll know that I love experimenting with new crops. Every year I grow something new or different to try. 

For a few years now I've been growing Oca or New Zealand Yam and I've fallen in love with them a little bit. They taste great, don't suffer from disease, but have unpredictable yields. 

I think the best way I can sum up why I love them is their potential as a future food crop. 

I'm a sucker for carbohydrates and largely live on potatoes and wheat (bread, pasta), oats (breakfast) with a bit of rice thrown in! But in my quest for self sufficiency/reliance I'm always looking for new sources of carbohydrates that I could grow. 

Some yams sprouting ready to plant (this picture is from 2016)

One of the keys to self sufficiency is to grow a wide range of crops that could support you. Having a wide range of crops gives you a safety net, if one crop fails you have many more to feed you. 

As it stands the Oca isn't it, if you were banking on these tubers producing then there is a lot of years you'd end up going hungry. 

This is because they only start to produce tubers when the day length reaches 12 hours or less, and in the UK that means that the weather can have serious implications to yields and early killing frost, like we had this year, means the difference between two builders buckets full (2015 harvest) compared to just a handful (2016 harvest).

After my disappointing harvest last year I got looking on the internet to see what could be done to increase my yields, when I stumbled upon the Guild of Oca Breeders. This is a plant breeding club that is trying to develop a crop that isn't so day length sensitive and will perform much better in the northern hemisphere.

They are doing this by a process called recurrent mass selection, growing thousands of genetically diverse seedlings where the best are then selected and regrown for further testing. 

The exciting thing about this is that the potato was also adapted in a similar way. 

Another great thing is that all the genetic material is kept in the public domain under the Open Source Seed Initiative (something very important to me).

There are different levels of membership,  I've signed up as an "experimenter" So I'm setting aside a few garden beds to grow this crop and I'll be expected to perform certain tests (destructive harvests where the same named varieties are dug up at different times to compare yields). There are other levels of membership where you can sign up as a supporter and receive a selection of named varieties to grow in your garden or levels for more experienced gardeners involving cross pollination or raising seedlings. 

I'm excited about trying to developed a crop in my garden that could one day have an impact on what we eat. I'm also excited about using the collective knowledge of the guild to improve my growing, I love using opportunities like this to further my skills as a gardener.

If you're interested then click here to see what The Guild Of Oca Breeders is all about.

Who else grows Oca? 

And who else has had really variable yields?

Disappointing Oca Harvest

 A couple of days ago (before this heavy cold frost) I had a dig around my Oca (New Zealand yams) bed (this post is in response to Sol asking when to harvest them - in truth it's a guessing game!). 

We had a frost that killed them the earlier in the month so I left them a good three weeks, where the tubers are then meant to swell, the later this happens in the year the better as they only form the tubers as the days get shorter. 

I only dug up half the bed and I was very disappointed by the results, the tubers are all small and very few in number. Compared to last years harvest where I had a couple of buckets worth it's going to be slim pickings with only enough to replant really. 

I'm going to leave the other half in the bed a little longer and see if that makes any difference to the size of the tubers. All i need to worry about is pests and them rotting in the ground so it's a bit of a gamble.

It's a shame as this is a crop with such potential, but it needs some development to make it a predicable crop that produces tubers eariler. 

I've recently joined the Guild Of Oca Breeders to help to try out new varieties in the hope of finding some that crop earlier. I'll do a post about what they get up to another time, I just need to decide how much space I should dedicate to this crop in future - when it's good it's very very good, and when it's bad it's dreadful!

Who else has harvested their yams yet? 

New Zealand Yam Harvest

Last year I grew some New Zealand Yams (Ocas), I've only just got round to harvesting them as it's been so mild I had no risk of the frost killing them off, they do say to leave them in the ground for as long as possible but I might have taken that to the extreme!

I brought some from the Real Seed Company and Dawn From Doing It For Ourselves In Wales also sent me a package with them in. It was really good because it gave me a good amount to grow and a good mix of red and white ones as well.

They all grew well over the summer and the leaves were a great snack in the garden, but I didn't realise how well they were growing until I came to harvest them.

White ones

 The girls and I have dug up no end of these. It's been a fun game for them because it's like finding buried treasure, a little shining red or white grub like tuber in the mud, lots of cries of "There's one!" and giggles as they get stuck in the mud. 

Red ones

Getting stuck in! It's pretty muddy here! 

Full builders bucket and that's not all of them! 

We had a full builders bucket of red and white tubers, plus a good few large pots full as well. I cooked them for the first time on New Years Day and they tasted really nice just roasted with the rest of the veg.

I think that these are a great backup crop to have in the garden, a relativity trouble free source of carbohydrates, unaffected by blight, and is meant to store quite well. Another advantage is that very few people will recognise the crop while it's growing. 

Who else has grown these? Any good recommendations for cooking them and storing them?