Story of My Life in 2017 and Root Vegetables (Yacon)

When did I write last for this blog? I do not even remember. Was it in 2016? 2017 passed by so fast that I can almost tell what I did for each day as the last eleven months seemed like just the last eleven minutes. This was a crazy year for me. I had to apply for a promotion to Associate Professor, and which involved writing essays and letters, collecting documents, and acquiring reference letters. I got the promotion but could not enjoy it much as my father has developed dementia, it seems. He already had Parkinson. Now the disease is deteriorating to dementia. So, we are thinking of bringing him to live with us. Our house didn't have any full-bathroom in the first floor. Since he will not be able to climb stairs, so we have remodeled our house, built a full-bathroom and the remodeling is still going on. I had so many plans for the garden this year but nothing happened as we are spending our time, money and energy on remodeling our house. I also received a grant from the university for a research, and from August till November 13, I was busy with that as our work got accepted for presentation and publication. Thus, lots of work. And, we also did other things for which lots of paper work needed to be done. I will write about those later if they become successful. And on top of all these there are also teaching, mentoring, advising, committee work, family work and all sorts of other things. But slowly everything is winding down, and thus I found some time to go into the garden and pick up whatever the garden produced. I didn't do anything for the garden -- no weeding, no watering, no planting -- but my dear garden still produced. So, today I will talk about a kind of root vegetable that I grow -- Yacon.

I grow quite a few root vegetables -- potato, sweet potato, taro, yacon, ginger, turmeric, garlic and onion (though I am not sure if garlic and onion are considered root vegetables or not) along with beet, turnip and radish (which I grow them not all the time but now and then). Here are some sweet potato and taro that I harvested this year.

Yacon is a root vegetable much like potato or Jerusalem Artichoke. It is from the Andes (Peru). It is very crunchy and has a sweeter taste (the taste is a cross between pear, pineapple, Jerusalem Artichoke, Guava). The plant, can easily grow as tall as eight to ten feet, and produces sunflower like small flowers. The plant behaves very much like a Jerusalem Artichoke plant (I have talked about JA here ). However, Jerusalem Artichoke can survive snow and below freezing temperature. It in fact needs cold to become sweeter. Yacon will die as soon the temperature freezes. You then need to harvest it. Here is the picture of the dead plant that I harvested. It might not be clear in the picture but perhaps you can understand how tall it can grow:

There is a certain procedure in harvesting Yacon. Yacon is a perennial plant. It has a mother-crown and then all the storage tubers that grow from it. We can only eat the storage tubers (I am not sure if the mother crown is edible or not), and then need to plant the mother-crown for next year's harvest. The mother-crown looks reddish in color. The edible storage tubers are chrome/pale yellow/white in color as shown in the pictures below.



I harvest the tubers. Then, I take a pot, put some soil in it; put the mother-crown in it, and cover it up with soil. I leave the pot in basement. When spring comes, I put out the mother-crown in a raised bed in the garden. It initially grows slowly; then suddenly it starts growing fast with huge (like really huge) big leaves and a thick stalk. Nothing bothers this plant. All it needs is some sunshine. Online says that it needs lots of compost. I have not experienced that yet (may be my garden soil is rich?). The tubers are full of inulin, the compound that fights against diabetes. Thus, it can be eaten by people, unlike potato, suffering from diabetes. It can be eaten raw, or fried, boiled, or baked. The only drawback of this vegetable is that it does not last long, once harvested. So, you need to cook it very fast or it will rot within 2-3 days.

Here are some flowers of 2017:



I did not give anything to the garden this year; but she gave me in abundance.