Saturday, February 16, 2008

Growing challenge thoughts

So I'm still really in the planning stages of the growing part of the growing challenge, and Wow did you all see the neato mosquito tuber that Path to Freedom had on their blog recently? It's Yacon.

I'm researching it. This and Jerusalem artichokes look like they could be a really neat experiment. I read the Mother Earth News article on Yacon and it said that the plant has a really long growing season and doesn't develop tubers until the fall, and that it needs to be stored in the winter like a dahlia. I'm ok with that 'cept I'm in a zone 5 and my last frost date is late May. If this infernal snow would subside long enough for me to put some plastic down to heat my soil up a bit I could probably get away with it. But the way we've been going it looks to me like we may be in for another year without a summer. Just kidding of course, but seriously, I think we've gotten more snow than the last couple years combined and we still have March and April left to go!