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RARE & UNUSUAL TUBERS now sold out - but you can sign up to be told when they're harvested Yacon Here is another unusual tuber, grown by Catherine in the Round Garden. Yacon is a large plant from South America, distantly related to sunflowers, and it has huge, attractive fuzzy green leaves. It has very pretty little yellow flowers at the top of each stalk. The plants are very easy to grow and seem to thrive in almost any soil or climate. Underground, it grows a bit like a dahlia - with a small clump of knobbly growing tips, and large storage tubers radiating out in a circle. At the end of the season you dig it all up and the storage tubers are the bit you eat - they are really sweet and crunchy. The knobbly growing tips you divide and replant, so you don't need to keep buying it. The sweet storage tubers are peeled before use - and nice two ways: raw in salads, and stir fried as a substitute for water-chestnut. The tubers store very well and its a very welcome addition to our winter salads. A final interesting point about Yacon is that the type of sugar in the tubers is inulin - the same as in Jerusalem Artichokes - and for which most people don't have a digestive enzyme - so it has almost no calorific value whatsoever, despite its sweetness. We send out growing tips that have been divided and are ready to pot up. Order TuYA - Sorry - sold out now until Jan 09 at the earliest Sadly we cannot take orders in advance as harvests are never certain. But we can email you to let you know it is available: fill in this form & press the button. Your email address will never be used for anything else. ~ A Seasonal Special: "OCA" ~ (Latin name: Oxalis Tuberosa) This is a favourite of ours from South America. Oca is grown and used just like new potatoes. It has a lemony taste and is very easy to grow as long as you have a moderately long season. It is completely unrelated to potatoes and so of course not affected by blight! We have just a couple of packets left now. It needs planting straight away when you receive it.   'Pure White' Oca A new addition to our oca collection last year. This is a beautiful creamy white strain - well, perhaps a very, very pale yellow would be more accurate. Like all oca, they are absolutely delicious par-boiled then roasted. Orinigally just 8 baby tubers were sent to us by Frank Kiersbilck in Belgium, who we think got them from a collector in Ireland. From that we've multiplied them up to the point where we have a couple hundred packets available this year. We've had a great harvest of these from our 'eating' garden too, and they will see us through the winter once the potatoes run out. SOLD OUT UNTIL NOV 2008 But we can email you to let you know it is available: fill in this form & press the button. Your email address will never be used for anything else. ~ An experimental crop: Ulluco (Ullucus Tuberosum) ~ Another incredibly rare tuber from South America. We need to be clear that while Oca is an easy-to-grow staple you all should try, Ulluco is a very experimental crop. We are releasing a small number of packets simply for the benefit of plant collectors and other people who are interested in experimenting with it. We are not recommending this for people to grow in general as we haven't figured out the best way to grow it yet in the UK. 'Mixed' Ulluco Ulluco - described as a botanical jewel - is a small tuber, very like a little potato, but in a huge range of colours - pink, purple, yellow and green. Often with spots and stripes! The plants are beautiful too, with deep red and orange stems and glossy green leaves. It is grown together with oca and potatoes all in the same field in its home, South America. This 'polyculture' is resilient and ensures that there is always something to eat as they are different species, so not affected by the same pests or diseases. Only potatoes were brought back to Europe by the Spanish Conquistadores, and people have over the years adapted them to the European climate. But in its homeland, ulluco is a major staple too. So getting hold of ulluco to try out has been a long research project for Ben. We had some in Spain, but it didn't like the heat. Then two years ago, out of the blue, not just one, but two different people turned up at our door here in Wales with a small number of baby tubers to donate. We very carefully (!) planted these and grew them out. Then regrew them this year. Now we seem to have at least 3 types, perhaps 5; its hard to tell as you often get different colours on one plant. We are making them available here solely for the benefit of the botanically curious and other collectors. We do not yet recommend them for general food production because they normally tuberise very late, thus making small tubers. Last year we did some good selection work on our population of Ulluco, with great results - this harvest we did get over a kilo per plant from our best strain. (this is 20 times what the less good plants did) Ulluco will next be available in December 2008. We can email you to let you know it is harvested: fill in this form & press the button. Your email address will never be used for anything else.