Early spring musings - 2016

Time for the early spring musings - 2016 edition, also known as my Utopian elaborations on the coming season's gardening projects. As last year, early spring can here be interpreted rather euphemistically, seeing that the weather for the moment is still decisively wintery. But it's March, and March equals hope times plenty of ambition in my book. Without further ado, and in no particular order of appearance, here's a few of the projects that I intend to pursue in and around the garden this year:

 C. maxima landrace

Sweet Mama seed

Last year, I confessed to a 'slight' obsession with growing winter squash and elaborated on my intention of creating my own c. maxima landrace variety. I've eaten my way through most of the maxima stash by now and there's a definite pattern to be discerned. Sweet Mama is by far the most reliable and consistently delicious variety. Sweet Meat OH and Marina di Chioggia were a disappointment last year, which was surprising since Sweet Meat OH gets lavish comments all over the internet and Marina di Chioggia was one of my absolute favourite squashes the year before. The weather can probably be blamed here, since Sweet Mama is a short-season squash while the other two require a long growing season, which the chilly summer of 2015 failed to provide. As a result, those heavenly squashes that I ended up saving seed from were for the most part Sweet Mama's, with a couple of decent Green Hokkaido's and Burgess Buttercups making up the balance. Since this is the whole point of a landrace project, I'm proceeding as planned and will be growing out the F1's this year. In parallel though, I'll be making some controlled crosses as well, mostly to try and dehybridize Sweet Mama and to cross Sweet Mama with Marina di Chioggia, the idea here being that I wouldn't mind a shorter-season version of the latter. I also couldn't really restrain myself and I've bought a few (or, well, quite a lot...) new varieties to try out: Blue Kuri, Sibley, Blue Guatemala Banana, Bon Bon, Crown Prince, Buen Gusto de Horno, Blue de Hongarie.... Hmmm. I guess I'll never run out of new winter squash varieties to try...


The C. moschata project will be put on hold for the time being. I grew three moschata's last year: Longue de Nice, Long Island Cheese, and Waltham Butternut and I quite disliked the taste and texture of the first two varieties, though I'm not entirely sure they managed to mature fully. The butternuts were certainly not fully ripe when I picked them in early October, but after a few months on my attic they turned out to be a lot more tasty than I had expected. I think it would be worth pursuing a moschata breeding project here, but I simply don't have the space to do it this year. Something for the future...

Sweet potato

Nothing like starting sweet potato slips to indicate
the (imminent) arrival of spring!

Of the 37 sweet potato varieties that I trialed in 2015, most didn't produce anything worth keeping. A few did, however, so the sweet potato adventure continues into 2016. I'll attempt to be a bit more serious about producing seed this year, while also continuing to scour the planet in search of those more cold-tolerant varieties that simply have to be out there somewhere (Papua New Guinea, are you reading this?). The sweet potato gods were kind enough to provide me with some Georgia Jet (amongst others), so it will be exciting to see if it finally lives up to its reputation in my garden. I recently inspected the tubers that I had saved, and most of the larger ones made it through the winter fairly unscathed, despite extensive cutworm damage. Some of them already had tiny sprouts forming, so I've put them in water now, where they will sit happily for a few months and hopefully produce a good amount of slips by May or so. At the moment I'm counting on growing 10 different varieties this year, though knowing myself this number is likely to increase somewhat... More on this as sweet potato planting time is drawing near!


Skirret

Skirret. The roots get much more impressive
than depicted here though (img source)

Last year marked my first attempt at growing skirret (Sium sisarum), a perennial root vegetable in the Apiaceae family and one of the 'Lost Crops of the Europeans'. Introduced in Europe by the Romans from its Chinese homeland, skirret appears to have been quite popular in these regions until the 18th century or so, after which the potato's march across the continent pushed it into botanical oblivion. Having grown and tasted it, I would say it's high time for a skirret renaissance. The plants are hardy and form clusters of fairly thin white roots just below the surface, which can become quite large over the years (the root clusters that is, not the individual root 'fingers'). These can be left in the ground over the winter and harvested whenever the skirret cravings hit you. Essentially, you just dig up the plant when you need it, break off the most seductively looking roots, and replant the rest. Easy like skirret pie! The Dutch (suikerwortel) and Swedish (sockerrot) naming of the plant attests to its taste, which is sweet and very pleasant. In fact, skirret has soared rapidly in my vegetable hall of fame and became one of my absolute favourite vegetables last year, and I'm sure I haven't even begun to explore the full extent of its culinary delights. Peeling the pencil-sized roots can be a bit of a pain, but it's actually completely unnecessary since the peel does not interfere with the taste at all. Just scrub, cut and cook! Some reports mention that the roots can have woody cores, but I have not noticed this in any of the skirret I tasted last year.

There are some budding attempts underway to breed skirret varieties with fewer but thicker roots, which I'm hoping to make a modest contribution to. I've been getting seed from different places and also saved some of my own (skirret flowers every year and readily produces seed), so I will be growing out a lot of that and then start doing some selection. Of last year's plants I kept the ones that looked most promising, so it will be interesting to see how they do in their second year.


Oca

Another first for me last year was growing oca, a favourite amongst Andean tuber enthusiasts. Despite a fairly early frost I was quite happy with the result and I hope I can reproduce or improve upon the yield in 2016. I've been eating quite a lot of different oca's this winter and I must say they now rank quite highly in the aforementioned hall of fame. They're particularly good when baked in the oven. At some point it might be worth doing a more organized taste test to identify the tastiest and most starchy varieties, which definitely would be a criteria worth considering in any future breeding attempts. Anyway, I thought I already had quite a few different varieties last year, but then I went to visit Frank van Keirsbilck some time ago and I somehow - entirely inadvertedly, honestly! - came away with an additional 10 varieties. Together with the GOB trial that I will be participating in this year as well, and the grow-out of my own oca seeds, 2016 is promising to be a pretty oca-esque year. No complaints there!


The Great Legume Project

Some cute beans I'll be growing

Beans beans beans... With all the roots, tubers and winter squash that I am growing, I'm not usually at risk of suffering from carbohydrate shortage. I could definitely grow a bit more protein crops though, so for a while now I've been playing with the idea of upscaling my legume cultivation. Enter the 2016 Great Legume Project. This year's garden will have a large section dedicated to testing different legumes for dry seed consumption. Last year I already grew a Swedish lentil variety called 'Gotlandslins', but it mostly ended up feeding the local rabbit population and in the end I barely got more seed out of it than I had planted in the first place. Not entirely successful, in other words. I'll give this lentil variety another go this year, and I'm adding a bunch of different chickpea varieties (mostly from store-bought chickpeas, but also a black and orange variety from Adaptive Seeds in the US), different fava beans, dry bush beans, and a couple of Swedish heirloom 'gråärter' (grey peas), which apparently are called black peas or maple peas over yonder in Britain. I'm particularly excited about the chickpeas and the maple peas. The latter apparently were a northern European staple in the days of yore and are currently being promoted by some enthusiastic agriculturalists here as Sweden's answer to the chickpea. I'm quite fond of dried peas and they tend to feel comfy in somewhat colder climates, so I'm anticipating a bit of magic to happen between me and the peas this year. Chickpeas apparently are more cold-tolerant than I had thought (at least based on Carol Deppe's account in Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties) so perhaps the prospect of a homegrown hummus is not as far-off as I had feared. As to the dry beans, the plan is to grow a classical Swedish brown bean, a couple of other heirlooms, and a few colourful short-season US varieties. More on this trial as it happens!


The Modest Melon Project

Last autumn I received a small treasure in the mail, containing the seeds from a cross between 6 early watermelon varieties and the offspring of one early muskmelon (Blenheim orange). As far as melons go, I've only ever grown a 'babymelon' variety before, on plastic mulch, and though they did quite well the taste wasn't all that exciting so I never really bothered continuing with it. The arrival of these early, and actually good-tasting varieties is about to change all that. Since I don't have access to a greenhouse on my allotment, growing melons is definitely a challenge which means that my aims with this year's melon project are very modest. I'll be growing a few plants of each variety/cross and hopefully get at least a melon or two out of it. In fact I'll probably be ecstatic if I manage to haul as much as one ripe melon to safety before someone ends up stealing it. Then I'll save seed and repeat ad infinitum. I suppose you know where this is going..


Residual trials

And then, of course, there's everything else. Before this post turns into a monster, let me just finish by mentioning some of the new arrivals that I'm fairly enthusiastic about. Detailed descriptions to follow later!

- Hopniss (Apios americana): Also known as the American groundnut, Indian potato, or potato bean, however you like to call it. This a tuber-forming legume that was highly valued by native Americans, who knew a thing or two about valuable food crops. It's a perennial that apparently takes a few years to really give a worthwhile yield, so I'm not exactly expecting bumper harvests. Nevertheless, as you might have figured by now I find the prospect of growing new root crops pretty impossible to resist.

- Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius): New root crop no. 2, this is another Andean native, relative of the sunflower and the Jerusalem artichoke. It's high-yielding and supposedly fairly easy to grow. Produces large, inulin-rich tubers that are crunchy and sweet and can be eaten like a fruit.

- Quamash (Camassia quamash): New root crop no.3, a perennial, native of North America, also highly valued by the continent's pre-Columbian inhabitants. Quamash needs a couple of years to bulk up as well, so expect plenty of pictures of microscopic tubers.

- Crosne (Stachys affinis): Alright, I admit it, I'm mostly growing root crops, or at least those seem to the plants that made it onto this not very random shortlist. Perhaps I should work on countering that bias... I do like my greens, really. Anyway, crosne or Chinese artichoke is a perennial of the Lamiaceae, or mint family. It forms masses of small, worm-like tubers that are supposed to be delicious but a bit of a pain to clean. Worm-like tubers, anyone?

- Potato (S. tuberosum Group Phureja): I fear I might be becoming a potato snob. I recently caught myself ranting about the qualities of Arran Victory, which was one of last year's potato revelations for me and as I recently discovered is described by William Woys Weaver (in 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From) as the ultimate potato. Is this treading the potato equivalent of microbrew hipsterdom and coffee snobbism? Please stop me if at my next restaurant visit you find me complaining about the inferior potato variety that I was served. In any case, no, this won't be my first year growing potatoes, but it will be my first to grow Inca Bella, which is a potato variety of a completely different subgroup from the S. tuberosum group that the vast majority of European potato varieties derive from. It's supposed to be really, really delicious, so take note fellow potato heads.

- Turnip-rooted chervil (Chaerophyllum bulbosum): I don't know what it is with me and this plant, but I've yet to succeed in getting it to sprout for me at all. This will be the third year that I'm trying to grow it. I sowed the seeds in autumn and they have been outside the whole winter (they need stratification), so if I don't get anything now I'm _so_ blaming the seed company (again). Root chervil is supposed to be very delicate in taste, and sounds well worth the painstaking effort required in growing it (painstaking for me, at least). Just checked the pot, nothing sprouting yet...

A baby pig nut... hopefully!

- Pig nut (Bunium bulbocastanum): In Dutch this is called aardkastanje, and in Swedish jordkastanj, both of which literally translate as 'earth chestnut', since the taste of the tuber supposedly resembles that of sweet chestnuts. This is another perennial in the Apiaceae family, and another plant that would probably benefit from some selection (or more correctly, we would benefit from that..) since yields are purportedly very small. Pig nut is a pretty rare plant (at least in Belgium and the Netherlands) so I'm not entirely sure that the seed I have is actually B. bulbocastanum. Time will tell, at least I've got something sprouting in the pot I sowed with this.

Right, that's not all of it, but a big part at least. I know, I know: next time, more greens!

Oh! You pretty things

Winter has arrived also for the Andean crops in my garden, so it's high time for some updates. 2015 was my first year growing oca (oxalis tuberosa), a major root crop in many Andean countries and probably one of the better-known unusual tubers from that region. In total I planted 14 known varieties and 7 varieties that I tested for the Guild of Oca Breeders (GOB). Due to a bit of self-induced force majeure however, the former got thoroughly mixed up, so from now on they're all going through life completely anonymous (at least in my garden). I'm not one to judge a tuber by its name, and at a very practical level it really doesn't matter.

The oca patch in the middle of October

Ideally, the oca growing manual clarifies, one keeps her/his plants alive until the beginning of December if one is to benefit from a fully matured crop. This is because oca plants get slightly confused in the long-daylight hours outside of their native Andean range and respond by refusing to produce tubers until after the autumn equinox. Here on the west coast of Skåne, which you could think of as the California of Sweden, we usually have the first frost sometime in November, or even, as in 2014, the beginning of December, which is pretty good in oca-growing terms. Not so this year though, when a forecasted 4°C one night at the end of October turned into an ominous -0.6°C and caught me completely off guard, therefore pretty much decimating the oca patch. Highly unfortunate considering the 3 weeks of mild and frost-free autumn weather that followed... The GOB plants got completely killed, while the other plants got frosted about 3/4 of the way, probably because they were spaced closer together and had much more foliage. Again according to prevailing oca-growing dictates, one is supposed to leave the tubers in the ground for some two weeks after the plants are killed by frost, since the tubers continue to bulk up quite a bit during this time. Which I duly did, albeit impatiently so.

White variety, 540g

I can testify that, because of its colorful nature, oca is a highly satisfying crop to harvest. I would say it's a bit like gathering easter eggs. Except of course that oca is so much more exciting than easter eggs! I mean, aren't they incredibly pretty? So euhm... yes, I dug everything up, bagged all the tubers per plant, washed them, weighed them, and then selected the ones I want to continue with next year. Considering the earlier-than-ideal harvest, I was pretty happy with the results (but then again, I have never grown these before so I have nothing to compare to and probably would have been happy with nearly anything). Most plants produced somewhere around 200-300g of small to medium-sized tubers, with the best one being a completely white variety that yielded 540g. According to the information over at Cultivariable, oca can yield up to 1kg per plant. Clearly, I'm pretty far away from that, but it's a pretty decent start nonetheless. I'm saving all but the poorest performing varieties for next year, since I want to ensure that I continue to have the diversity required to produce seed. Oca is namely a bit picky when it comes to pollinating partners.

Oh! You pretty things! These are the discards,
the tubers from plants that yielded less than 200g

GOB14178 - This from two plants

Seed!

Speaking of seed, quite a few of my oca flowered, and some produced seed in late summer and early autumn. With some 25 seeds in total, this can hardly be called a gigantic harvest, but it's enough to do a little bit of excited experimenting next year. For the more substantial work of breeding that elusive daylength-neutral oca variety, I'll be relying on the likes of the GOB. Sadly though, this year's GOB varieties didn't do well at all in my garden. The only one that produced something worth mentioning was GOB14178. While the yield of seed-grown oca is bound to be very variable, the main reasons for the substantial difference between the GOB and non-GOB varieties in my garden are probably environmental. I planted the GOB varieties in a new plot of land, that I acquired just this year, and which turned out to have very low soil fertility and a pretty severe wireworm infestation. Basically, the GOB plants never looked happy and remained stunted throughout the season. In other words, I'm blaming mismanagement by the previous owner. Objective #1 for next year: Nurture the soil, and provide better conditions for GOB trials.

Other oca objectives for 2016: Regrow all but the worst of this year's varieties, keep them alive longer than this year, and produce more seed. Oh, and grow out this year's seeds. Ultimately, as I source more varieties, I also want to start selecting for taste and texture. So far I've only tasted a few varieties, but all have been very good, and some were outstanding. The texture seems to range from quite watery to potato-ish, and the taste from quite sour to starchy, to fairly sweet. Very interesting tastes, actually. I think I would like to select for varieties with a higher dry matter, and for less oxalic acid (i.e. a more neutral or slightly sweet tasting).

Oca's here to stay!

From Amandine to Zillifera; an Andean summer update

It's high time for a brief update on this year's experiment with the Andean family of exciting tubers. Spring has been chilly here, with temperatures not much higher than 15°C for most of May and June, and the Andeans seem to have loved it. It must be that the wind and the cold reminds them of home. So far I have managed to keep all of them in reasonably good health with few if any casualties (that I recall..). I'm not sure how that rates as an indicator of gardening success but on a personal level it feels pretty satisfying.

Oca
Prematurely bereft of their identity, my blend of oca tubers has been growing steadily. Of the 30 or so that I planted I believe only four did not come up. The four plants that I had potted up in March have sized up considerably and over the past two weeks actually started flowering. Some days ago I noticed two other varieties doing the same, so I had a first go at oca pollination. Oca has a tristylous flower morphology which basically means that not all flowers are compatible (here is a more detailed decription) and you need flowers of two different types in order for succesful pollination to occur. I've yet to see if the flowers I pollinated are setting seed... The weather has actually gotten a lot warmer the past week, and oca seems to require fairly cool temperatures in order to flower, so I will probably have to wait until later this summer for more pollination opportunities. Pest-wise, oca has been fairly troublefree for me so far, the slugs don't seem too fond of it (they have decided to decimate my root parsley seedlings instead..) and not much else does either it seems. Some of the plants have some black aphid colonies but really nothing majorly worrisome. Oh, and after planting my first batch, I've received some more varieties courtesy of Rhizowen and his newfound Guild of Oca growers. These are 'brand new' varieties so it will be exciting to see what comes of them. Reassuringly also, I've managed to get these in the ground unshaken and correctly labelled. I might have a scientific career ahead of me after all.

Ulluco
If I can conclude one thing from my first year attempt at growing ulluco so far, it must be that it is really, really, really slow-growing. I thought I would lose these to the slugs at some point, since there seemed no way they could possibly outpace this year's onslaught of Arion vulgaris. Yet with a little help of some plastic bottles and my murderous garden scissors, they seem to have pulled through and are now... well, just standing there, really. I assume their growth will speed up at some point and who knows, they might even flower, which I will be eagerly looking out for (viable ulluco seed is very rare).

Ulluco

Mashua
Mashua must be something of the polar opposite of ulluco. It is growing faster than anything else in my garden and has already filled the space that I had intended for it. In fact, I found three of the mashua plants invading the oca patch the other day, and one of them was happily strangling one of the oca's. Safe to say I seem to have significantly underestimated mashua's territorial requirements... It's also remarkably pest free, I have yet to see a slug, snail or aphid show any interest in it. The only creature that did fall for mashua's undisputable charms was a rabbit, which promply munched down half of the 'white' variety but left the 'zilifera' untouched. It must have been on to something there.. Both plants recovered swiftly. Mashua is related to the garden nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) and seems to have equally interesting flowers, so I'm looking forward to seeing those. I will have to wait until September though, since mashua normally only flowers with short daylengths.

Mashua, just before it got a bit out of control

Mauka
There's so much mystery surrounding mauka that this is easily one of my favourite plants at the moment. I've got two varieties growing, one red-leaved (which is either 'roja' or a red cipotato variety) and one that I grew from seed and is in all likelihood a direct descendant of the 'blanca' variety. These seem to be the only three varieties grown outside of the Andes at the moment. My objectives with it this year are first, to be finally able to taste it, which should be possible with the two plants that are in their second year now, and second, to somehow get it to produce seed. The latter will be tricky, since mauka apparently only starts flowering long into the European winter and is therefore very unlikely to produce mature seed before the frost kills it. I am planning to overwinter two plants indoors and hopefully can pursuade it to flower that way.

Mauka is fast-growing though not nearly as much as mashua. It has attracked a lot of aphids in my garden, with the result that all the growing tips have curled up. I assume this is slowing down the plant somewhat but it's still growing strongly so I see no immediate reason to start despairing. With the warmer weather of the past week, I'm also counting on increased predator activity to bring the aphid population back under control. Bring on the ladybugs!

Mauka blanca (?)

Aphid infestation in mauka growing tips

Quinoa
Ok, yes, so this is not exactly a tuber crop. It's all the more Andean though, so I propose that its inclusion here is fully justified. I'm trialling three kinds of quinoa this year, though I've had very poor germination with one and am yet to see if I will have any viable plants from that variety. I am also yet to be convinved that I'm actually growing quinoa and not the common garden weed lambsquarters (Chenopodium album). The two are closely related and plants look similar enough that I really can't tell them apart at the moment. I direct-sowed the quinoa in a place with plenty of lambsquarters, so the only real way to tell is to wait I suppose. I would be pretty excited to be able to grow quinoa, and going by ongoing attempts to commercialize it as a alternative agricultural crop in different European countries, this should not at all be impossible.

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa)

Potato
For good measure, and to do justice to the humble potato's origins, I'll include an update about this year's potatoes as well. I'm currently growing 7 varieties: Minerva, Juliette, Linzer Delikatesse, Amandine, Asterix, Arran Victory, and Mandel. I'm not exactly expecting a bumper crop since I planted them on a newly-dug piece of land that I didn't have time to prepare properly, but they should last for some months at least. I've since also read up on growing potatoes from seed ('commonly' known as TPS or True Potato Seed, as opposed to potatoes grown from seed potatoes, i.e. from tubers) and became sufficiently fascinated to put this on my (ever expanding) list of garden projects for next year. The idea is that, rather than relying on (disease-prone) tubers, you save the berries that (sometimes) form on potato plants and then grow those out to create your own locally adapted potato varieties. Incidentally, when I was thinning out the beets the other day I found one potato volunteer that must have come from one of last year's 'Sallad Blue' potatoes. Any potato that sows itself is a good potato in my opinion, so I'll consider that a humble start for next year's potato project!

Oca growing and the dangers of bicycle transportation

One of the root crops I'm trialling this year is oca (Oxalis tuberosa), an Andean tuber popular with fellow tuber enthusiasts but largely unknown with the potato-consuming crowds of Europe and North America (curiously though, it does seem to have established itself as a minor crop in New Zealand). Oca is an important staple in the Andean highlands, primarily Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and seems to have everything going for it: it grows fairly easily in harsh environmental conditions and poor soils; produces yields (potentially) rivalling those of the potato (at least in the Andes); and according to reputable sources (i.e. wikipedia) is a high-quality dietary source of potassium, vitamin C and iron amongst others. It is supposed to have the taste and texture of a potato, but with a lemony aftertaste (because of the varying levels of oxalic acid the tubers contain), though taste, along with colour, size, and yields in oca appears to differ widely depending on the variety. I wouldn't know to be honest, because I've never tasted one, but with some luck that's all about to change this winter. May this be my annum tuberosum!

I sourced some 14 (if I remember correctly...) different varieties past autumn, one of which came directly from Peru, and chitted them in egg cartons on my windowsill for a few weeks, much like potatoes, though these sprouted much slower. The Peruvian variety had started growing already when I received it and it was looking pretty shriveled by January so I potted up the tubers and grew them out on the balcony when it wasn't freezing. This is what it looked like back in April, just before I planted it out in the garden:

Oxalis tuberosa, var. 'annelotte'

The reports I read suggested that a lot of people pot all their tubers before planting them out but I had neither the space nor the patience for this, so I decided to give all the others the potato treatment instead and plant them out directly after my last average frost date. I thus meticulously labelled my egg cartons with the names of the different varieties and then, one sunny day at the end of April, packed everything into my bicycle crate and set myself on my way to the allotment. 

The science of egg carton chitting... here, oca and ulluco

I should have anticipated the result, for, notwithstanding this place being the Valhalla of bicycling, the road to my allotment is anything but even and I have over the years upturned plenty a plant start with what appears to be my excessively enthusiastic bicycling style. Anyway, suffice it to say that by the time I arrived, the oca's had been happily bumping all over their egg cartons, making my labelling efforts completely redundant and therefore putting a premature end to my intentions to systematically keep track of, and compare, the progress of the different varieties I have in my possession. Instead of making neat little variety-specific groups in the oca bed, as I had planned, I thus had to resort to planting everything at random. Please forgive me, Carl von Linné, but I suppose that as long as they grow well, I don't care so much what all of these were originally called. And grow they do, at least for the time being! With some exceptions, most of the plants have emerged by now, and they seem to be escaping the voracious appetite of the slugs in my garden this year. I wished that could be said of my Brassica seedlings, which keep disappearing overnight...

The oca bed, the four plants in front are the Peruvian variety
 that got a headstart on my balcony

Of course, in being so violently thrown all over the place, some of the oca also got separated from their sprouts. In a half-hearted attempt to make up for my foolishness I potted up these sprouts as soon as I came home and to my pleasant surprise almost all of them have since rooted. Some of these sprouts were really only half a centimeter or so tall, so these truly seem to be very resilient plants. Thus far this seems to be my kind of vegetable!

The sprouts that broke off easily rooted

What next? As most of the Andean root vegetables, oca is a daylight-sensitive plant and only starts producing tubers when days are short enough, sometime after the autumn equinox. In a frost-prone climate this essentially means that in order to get any kind of yield at all it's crucial to secure growth until well in November, which is far from impossible here in the Swedish south, but it's certainly not a given either. Oca enthusiasts such as Rhizowen and Bill Whitson are attempting to breed varieties that are daylight-neutral, and these are bound to pop up at some point (after all, the common potato started off as a daylight-sensitive plant as well), but until then, I suppose I'm facing the real possibility of an early frost killing all my plants before a single tuber has formed. At the other extreme, my plants might feel comfortable enough in their new surroundings to flower and produce seeds, which would allow me to do some oca breeding myself in the future. Fingers crossed!

Early spring musings...

My windowsills are filling up with pots and seed potatoes, seed packets are scattered all over my table and the balcony is slowly being colonized by obscure roots. It must be that time of the year again! It’s starting to look a lot like spring here, or at least it feels close enough to get carried away dreaming about the coming growing season. Here’s a brief rundown of this year’s projects:

Sweet potato galore

    I’ve collected different sweet potato varieties over the past months, including quite a few that reportedly grow at 2000+ meters. My hope is that I will stumble across a few varieties that could (potentially) produce a worthwhile crop here in Sweden or, failing that, that I can get some plants to set seed with which to breed. Sweet potatoes don’t produce seeds easily, and the key (apart from some very un-Swedish climatic conditions, needless to say), seems to be genetic diversity, which I should be able to provide. There were 40+ varieties stored in my apartment at some point but quite a few of them succumbed to dry rot while I was out of the country, probably because storage temperatures dropped lower than I had anticipated, and sweet potatoes really hate cold storage. I guess I’ll just consider this as a first evolutionary pressure selecting for cold-tolerance! It’s yet to be seen how many of them I will get sprout successfully, but so far it’s 18. Whether I can make it warm and cozy enough for them long enough is an entirely different matter of course…

Mauka take two

    Last year’s mauka crop was not much to write home about. I’m not one to give up easily, especially after seeing what Frank Van Keirsbilck’s maukas look like, so I’ll be replanting the overwintered roots as well as some of the cuttings I took in November. The roots already started sprouting so if anything I’ll struggle to keep them under control until they can go into my garden. I’ve also got my hands on some rare mauka seeds, so if all goes well I’ll soon have some new varieties to play with! To be continued.

 Invasion of the Inca crops

This year will also mark my first year growing oca, mashua, ulluco and quinoa. If you think trying this many new crops all at once is pushing my luck a bit, you are probably correct. I am most excited about oca (Oxalis tuberosa), which in the Andes is second in importance only to potatoes and which amateur growers here in Europe generally seem to lavish with praise. As with most Andean crops, oca unfortunately needs short daylight hours and at higher latitudes therefore only starts producing tubers after the autumn equinox. People like Frank van Keirsbilck and Rhizowen are trying to rectify this injustice by breeding a daylight-neutral variety and if I manage to cajole my future crop into producing seed for me I will gladly join this guild of oca growers. Mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum) and ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus) have received slightly less ravenous reviews but I’ll judge them when I’ve tried them. Most people these days are familiar with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), that Andean staple food-gone-global that has become the darling of hipsters and foodies. Prices for quinoa have in recent years risen to such astronomical heights that those in the Andes who used to rely on the crop can no longer afford it, so what better thing to do than grow your own!  Quinoa is one of the few (pseudo-)grain crops that yields acceptably even on smaller scale, and I’ve collected some varieties that have been selected for northern, wet climates so as to minimize the (considerable) chances of end-of-season disappointments and depressions.

Oca in close up, it started sprouting spontaneously

Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus) - this must be one of the most beautiful root vegetables out there

Landracing my wintersquash

In past years I’ve been on a quest to grow and sample the world’s variety of wintersquash. Honestly, this must be one of the most underappreciated crops out there. Incredibly easy to store, nutritious and delicious, it’s simply mind-boggling that the main purpose we’ve come up with for this amazing food crop is as a Halloween decoration! A staggering 95% of all pumpkins grown in the UK are used for carving and hollowing each year, amounting to enormous amounts of food waste. The humble pumpkin deserves so much more! It matters enormously which variety you grow though, and many do taste bland and uninteresting and frankly are of little culinary interest. But there's so many truly fantastic varieties that we could be growing instead.

Essentially the squash family is made up of three commonly eaten species: Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata. C. pepo includes most of the varieties that we eat in the form of summersquash as well as what are traditionally referred to as pumpkins. It is these that are usually carved up for Halloween lanterns. C. maxima includes winter squash of various colours and sizes. They usually do quite well in temperate climates and are completely underutilized here in Europe. C. Moschata includes the well-known butternut varieties and is very productive but it tends to require more warmth than C. Maxima and is therefore more difficult to grow here in the north. After three years of squash growing I’ve come to realize that I’m a C. maxima kind of guy. The best maximas are smooth, incredibly rich in flavour, nutty and sweet and in my opinion far outshine even such C. pepo favourites as 'sweet dumpling' and 'delicata squash'. This is why this year I’m abandoning my C. pepo (except the summersquash varieties) and launching an attempt to create my own C. maxima landrace variety that should bring together the best of ones I've sampled.. I will be selecting for a medium-sized, dry-fleshed variety that is nutty and rich in taste, has edible skin and stores forever. More details soon! I’ve never really tried to grow C. moschata, so that’s on this year’s list as well.

Expansion of the perennial patch

A small section of my garden is currently dedicated to perennials and this area will be expanded/filled in more densely this year. For example, I’m once again trying to pre-grow cicily (Myrrhis odorata). In past years I’ve tried seeds from three different seed companies and for some reason I haven’t gotten a single seedling yet, despite scrupulously following stratification instructions. This year’s seeds have been outside the whole winter but no signs of life yet. I’ve also started various other perennial greens and herbs, including bunias orientalis, mountain mint (Pycnanthemum pilosum) and mitsuba (Cryptotaenia japonica), and I will be planting some perennial kale (Daubenton) and some yams!

And then, of course, there’s also a host of smaller projects, such as trialing a host of new greens and testing a variety of new potatoes, but I’ll spare the details of that for now.