Inconspicious failures and lesser successes

Ah, winter, my favourite retrospective season, a perfect time to mourn the stillborn projects of past year and draw some candid conclusions for the next. Though I have a tendency in these pages to enthuse about the garden's most great and glorious crops, I should probably highlight that not everything conforms as willingly to my gardening dictates, or my taste buds for that matter. For balance, and in the spirit of horticultural transparency, here's three projects that turned out to be rather underwhelming in 2015:


1. Mashua

Mashua

That's tropaeolum tuberosum, a family member of the garden nasturtium and part of my booming Andean root vegetable collection. It's quite ornamental, grows like a weed, is supposed to yield amazingly, and it has an enticing exotic background to boot. What's not to like? In fact, it didn't yield very well for me at all, which in all likelihood is because, much like my oca, the plants succumbed to the first frost at the end of October. Also like oca, it is daylight sensitive so I assume yields would have been significantly higher had I been able to keep the plants alive a few weeks more. A number of plants also mysteriously succumbed halfway through the growing season, probably due to some critter enthusiastically chewing through the root system.

Mashua tubers

As it turns out, I'm not too sad that my mashua yields turned out as modest as they did, since my biggest beef with this plant is not with its gowth habit but with its taste. I had read quite a bit about mashua before I decided to plant some, and certainly the descriptions I found were mixed to say the least. From "the tuber with the taste that torments" to descriptions that compare its flavor to that of turnip, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Since I actually quite like turnip, I figured it couldn't be all that bad. Having tried mashua a number of times now, and trying very hard to like it at least a little bit, I can however attest that the taste is something else entirely. It gives a very intense, spicy yet simultanously very perfume-y flavour that completely overwhelms your taste buds (or mine at least). In fact, after eating just half a small, cooked mashua the taste went straight to my stomach and I started feeling slightly uncomfortable. I'm quite sure I would have retched had I continued eating it. There are bound to be ways around this rather unpleasant experience. William Whitson for example recommends submitting the roots to a long, slow cooking process with a good amount of fat and liquid in order to neutralize the taste. Sensible as that might be, it's just a bit more effort than I'm willing to spend on making something palatable. Call me a kitchen conservative, but with only 300 square meters of garden soil to my disposal and an endless list of projects waiting for their fair share, the least I expect of my plants is that they taste good. I'm sorry mashua, but I think I'm just not that into you.




2. Ulluco

Ulluco

I suppose I could try it as a condiment...

In contrast to mashua, I can't really fault ulluco for its taste, since I haven't actually gotten around to eating it. I reported earlier on how I found ulluco to be really slow growing, but it seems I hadn't quite appreciated just what this meant for my intention of eating it at some point. When I pulled up the 8 or so ulluco plants I had, at about the same time as the oca, I was forced to comb through the soil carefully in order to locate my harvest. More cynical people than me would say that growing ulluco the way I did is a novel and rather elaborate way of growing peas, since peas is surely what the 'tubers' I found resembled most. One monster was about the size of a pingpong ball. They're certainly very beautiful though, and apart from their apparent attractiveness to slugs and their slothlike growth habit, they seemed quite happy in the climate here. Having consulted with some of the real ulluco experts out there, I now think I will need to pre-plant these babies indoors in spring if I want to get some actual tubers out of them. Oh yes, and then there's the whole daylight thing of course... Somehow all this doesn't quite fall in with my hands-off gardening philosophy. The choice that will haunt me the following months, therefore, is whether I want to pamper these tiny ulluco through another growing season in order to give them a proper trial, or if I should put this project on hold for a while. There's some interesting developments in ulluco breeding taking place in gardens far more organised than mine, which I anticipate might ultimately yield varieties more amenable to my growing conditions. I suppose I could just sit back and wait for those to materialize. Since I'm not known for my patience however, I have this slight suspicion I will be taking the pampering approach...

The entire ulluco harvest

3. Achocha

I don't believe I've actually mentioned achocha before, but this is another of the Andean crops I tried out in 2015. It is a member of the cucurbit family and a close relative of such fascinating plants like the exploding cucumber (cyclanthera explodens). Achocha grows a spiny, hollow fruit with big black seeds that can be eaten either immature like a cucumber, or mature like a green pepper, whose tastes it is supposed to resemble in those stages. I obtained two varieties from Real Seeds, 'Fat Baby' and 'Giant Bolivian Achocha' (a.k.a. caigua). The two seem to belong to distinct species, respectively cyclanthera brachystachya and cyclanthera pedata, and certainly the true leaves turned out to be rather different. Leaves of the Giant Bolivian somewhat resemble that of cannabis indica, which I imagine might provoke concerned looks from the neighbours. I sowed two plants of each indoors in late April and planted all of them out in May. Both germinated easily enough and grew quite vigourously. Unfortunately the slugs seemed to be extremely fond of the Giant Bolivian. The two plants never had a chance; they were decimated almost the moment they were planted and never recovered. The Fat Baby fared much better and grew well despite the cold and wet summer. It was slow to flower but once it started, sometime in August, it produced masses of tiny yellow flowers that yielded an abundance of small, green spiny fruits - the spines are soft so you can easily eat them like that. Unlike cucumbers, which can be quite challenging to grow outdoors here, Fat Baby just took off and never looked back, which is why some people have been promoting it as a good temperate-season cucumber alternative. Having said that, I find the taste decisively less interesting than cucumber. Achocha does taste faintly similar, but it lacks the former's refreshing juiciness. I would also have to be a bit skeptical of the claim that the mature fruit, when cooked, tastes like a green pepper. Again, it has a hint of that flavor, but it's much less pronounced and more bland. Quite frankly, I don't think it tastes like all that much at all. That's a definite improvement over mashua, but not exactly something that gets me wildly excited. I've since read that achocha is nicest when picked rather young (I've mostly been eating it when it was very mature), and I have 3 more Giant Bolivian seeds to try out as well, so I might just give them another go. Maybe I'll unexpectedly become an achocha lover yet, but at the moment I'm not terribly impressed.

In terms of next year's gardening shortlist, that's a definite no-no for mashua and a half-hearted maybe for ulluco and achocha. Now to start dreaming about next year's new projects!

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!

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.