I’m trying something new.

This year I’ve been inspired to grow some new (to me) tubers after being inspired by some friends on Twitter.

I have dabbled in the world of ‘exotic’ tubers before, having grown and enjoyed Oca (also called New Zealand Yam) in the past. I even saved my own tubers for a while, but not last year.

So, I bought some more Oca and some other fun tubers to play with this year. Here is my haul of tuber goodies, all from the lovely Mandy at Incredible Vegetables who has detailed descriptions of all the tubers and their growing requirements (oca and ulluco are frost sensitive) on her website www.incrediblevegetables.co.uk .

Here are my goodies. From top centre we have chinese artichoke (the ones that look like knobbly worms, in the centre is the ulluco that look like coloured jewels, to the right of centre is the skirret seed and at the bottom is the oca.

See for yourself in this week’s video

You can see all of these tubers and hear a little bit about each one in today’s video, including how my new oca compare to my old ones and how I’m a bit puzzled about the description of the texture of ulluco. Click here or on the link below to watch it.

Final thoughts.

Have you ever grown ‘exotic’ vegetable tubers? If so, which were a success and which weren’t worth the effort?
Let me know in the comments below.

As for me, I love to experiment, with the food I cook as well as the plants I grow, so I’m really looking forward to this experiment. I did one also try jeruslaem artichokes (also called sunchokes) but they lived up to their reputation as ‘fartichokes’ and so I didn’t try them again!
I’ll keep you posted about how this year’s tuber experiment goes as the season progresses.