FAQ: Yacón

What's that plant? and other frequently asked questions

After the wild success of the potato experiment, I rushed to the nursery to see if I could get a second crop in. This late in the season, they had no more seed potatoes, but told me I could probably do fine with supermarket potatoes, as long as they weren't treated.

As long as I was there, I wandered around to see if there was anything else I might want to grow, and found Yacón: a relative of the sunflower, grown for its edible tubers. Not quite a potato, but definitely worth trying.

What's that plant?

Yacón, also known as "Peruvian ground apple."

Yacón, a.k.a. Peruvian Ground Apple

What part do you eat?

Edible tubers grow underground, like potatoes. They taste kind of like apples, or jicama. You can eat them raw or cooked.

What kind of plant is it?

Yacón is related to the sunflower. No word on whether its flowers produce edible seeds, though one web site said it had been cultivated by dividing the root cluster for so many generations that it no longer produces viable pollen or seeds.

Left: Yacón  Right: Sunflowers.

Where does it come from?

Yacón is native to South America.
I bought these plants as seedlings from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery.

FAQ: Evil tomatoes

What's that plant? and other frequently asked questions

Is that a black tomato?

Yes. The variety is called "Indigo Rose."

Why is it black? 

It gets its color from anthocyanins, the same antioxidants that make blueberries blue.

How do you know when it’s ripe?


If you look carefully, some of the tomatoes have green patches where they were shaded from the sun. When the tomato is ripe, those green patches will turn red, and the rest of the skin will change from the dark black to a slightly brighter purple color.

What does it taste like?

I don't know – this is the first time I've grown this variety.

Is it a real tomato? Is it GMO? Is it a hybrid?

It is a real tomato, and it's not GMO or hybrid. In fact, it's open-pollinated. (That means that if you let the plant pollinate itself and then plant the seeds, the plant that grows will be the same as the parent. You can't do that with GMO or hybrids – you have to buy new seeds every year.

Where does it come from?

Indigo Rose was developed by vegetable breeders at Oregon State University using traditional methods. Many kinds of tomatoes contain small amounts of natural anthocyanins in their leaves and stems. Some wild tomatoes from Chile and the Galapagos Islands had small amounts of the purple pigment in their fruit, too. The OSU breeders took tomatoes from these lines, cross-pollinated them, and chose the purplest of the offspring to be the parents of the next generation.

I bought these plants as seedlings from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery.

Sweet potato

I believe this is a japanese sweet potato from El Cerrito Natural Grocery but I can't be certain, as it's been languishing in the corner of our kitchen for many weeks. Since it managed all this growth in such an inhospitable environment, I expect great things now that I have tucked it into a nice section of the garden bed. 

As I was planting this, a neighbor walked by and remarked, "Sweet." Yes indeed. 

Bitter greens

My go-to solution for unknown or problematic greens is to sauté them with bacon. This works for absolutely everything. Alas, we were out of bacon the other day, when I discovered (in the middle of making dinner) that our "perpetual spinach" had gotten bitter.

"Perpetual spinach" is actually a variety of chard that's supposed to taste like spinach but doesn't. Other than that, it's a pretty good green for the summer months.  The flavor and texture are milder than most chards, but it holds its color and body nicely in a quick sauté or on a pizza. You can eat it raw, though when doing so I like to rip it into small pieces, toss it in some oil and acid, and let it wilt for twenty minutes before serving. It handles warm weather without bolting or going bitter. Until now. 

Lacking bacon, I turned to Mark Bittman's "Leafy Greens," a cookbook I found at our local independent bookstore (Pegasus on Solano) just as I was complaining that all the "Recipes from your Garden" cookbooks were full of recipes that called for a tablespoon of chopped herbs, or a few tomatoes. Where, I asked, are the cookbooks full of ways to use up all the goddamn kale? 

"Leafy Greens" is that book. It's full of ways to make big bunches of greens taste really, really good. Not by hiding them in spaghetti sauce, but by knowing what techniques and flavors work best with each kind of green. Even the bitter ones and the spicy ones that I usually avoid. 

Since Bittman didn't actually have a category for "Chard that didn't get enough water and turned bitter because you're a bad, bad gardener," I skimmed through the recipes for other bitter greens and went with "Broccoli Raab with Sausage and Grapes." Kind of.

Substitutions:

   chard instead of broccoli raab

   lamb-pork-arugula sausages instead of "fresh, garlicky sausages"

   peaches (cut up) instead of grapes

I ignored his cooking directions, and just sautéed the sausages until they were close to done, tossed in the washed, raw greens, stirred them around, put a lid  on the pan and let them steam a few minutes until they were tender, then tossed in the peaches, gave everything a quick stir, and sprinkled some pine nuts on top. 

It was really, really good. 

Insufficient zucchini

This is the time of year when food blogs showcase recipes whose primary attribute is their ability to use up huge quantities of zucchini, ideally without anyone noticing. When gardeners force their friends and neighbors to accept large bags of squash, leaving them on people's porches when they're not home. 

I have a huge, sunny garden, and by all rights I should be overrun with zucchini. Sadly, I am not.





This is not for lack of trying. I put in four summer squash plants: two "Patio Star" from the nursery, and two "some kind of grey squash, I think" seedlings given to me by someone at the weekly crop swap. Having by that time run out of room in the garden, I even built them a special bed off to the side, where they'd have plenty of room to stretch out their tendrils.

My plants thrived, grew, produced big bright orange flowers. Tiny little baby zucchini appeared. Then, one by one, the baby zucchini shriveled up and died. Starting at the blossom end, they'd turn yellow, then brown, softening into moldy little tubes of mush.

None of the food blog recipes call for mush.

I tried giving them more water, then less, then more again. I checked the internets, which said it was lack of either pollination or calcium. Apparently, most soil has enough calcium, but irregular watering can prevent the plant from absorbing enough. Whoops. On the other hand, this particular bed doesn't have great soil, since I didn't have much compost when I built it. I think I filled it mostly with recycled potting soil from containers whose tenants had passed away. Possibly not the greatest approach to horticulture. 

I grabbed a q-tip and hand-pollinated all the flowers, just in case that was the issue. Added a thick layer of eggshell-rich compost, and vowed to water more regularly. In the meantime: if you're one of those unfortunate souls with more zucchini than you can handle, feel free to bring them over. And while you're here, take a bag of kale home with you. 

Our animal friends: squirrels

Came home to find this gal hanging upside down from a drooping sunflower, shelling the seeds and stuffing them into her face with impressive efficiency.

Since she manages to feed herself without cutting down the flowers, hasn't affected our own consumption, and amuses me, I haven't pestered her. I know it sets a bad precedent, but I imagine when the sunflower seeds run out she'll return to mooching off the neighbor who actually puts peanuts out for the squirrels. If not, we will have words then. And by words, I mean the garden hose.

Purple pesto

The slugs ate my first three basil plants in record time. I've set out another dozen, and am amusing myself in the meantime by making alternative pestos. They're great because a) they use up lots of whatever herbs need pruning and b) I end up with intensely flavored goodness that I can toss into whatever I'm cooking.

This week, I had an excess of Red Orach (a.k.a. Hillbilly Spinach). Its flavor isn't as intense or distinct as the herb-heavy pestos I made last week, but it made a nice base for the usuals -- garlic, parmesan, pine nuts, olive oil -- with a bright hit of meyer lemon (zest and juice). 

Of couse, the best part is that it's purple, and will turn your noodles magenta.

Red Orach, aka Hillbilly Spinach. I've found it to be a great garden producer -- I keep cutting, it keeps growing back. Pretty heat-tolerant, bug-resistant, and tasty raw or cooked (though it gets bitter once it goes to seed).

Washed, stemmed, and stuffed into the Cuisinart. Started with about 1/2 the leaves, gave them a few pulses with the rest of the ingredients, then added the rest.