Breeding New Micro Tomatoes

A while ago a very generous person gave me some seeds from a miniature dwarf variety of tomato called Micro Tom.  I am very fond of this variety and am slowly building up numbers of seeds and distributing them to other growers.  This variety carries several miniaturising genes which mean that it only grows a tiny plant less than 10cm tall, this tiny plant can produce a small number of cherry tomatoes.  These cherry tomatoes taste ok and I believe the plants are meant to carry some genes for resistance of various diseases.

Breeding vegetables is enjoyable, but too often progress is slow due to only being able to grow one generation per year.  Creating a new variety of tomato often takes 5 to 10 years or more!  Breeding micro tomatoes can be a lot faster.

In any breeding endeavor the lack of space is always an issue.  After selling the property I no longer have the luxury of space which makes the problem worse.  This has started me thinking a lot more seriously about breeding a few new types of micro tomato by using Micro Tom or another micro tomato as one of the parents.  While I am trying to build up numbers of Micro Tom seeds and distribute them I am also using a small number in breeding projects.

Micro Tom tomato

Micro Tom Tomatoes are good, but they could be better
Micro tomatoes have very short life cycles so several generations can be grown per year.  They are often used in studies as a model organism due to their short life cycle.  From planting the seed to harvesting the fruit and planting that seed takes a little over 3 months.  I can potentially grow 3 to 4 generations a year, this means creating a new variety can take as little as 2 years (but probably a bit more than that).

Micro tomatoes take up a small fraction of the space of a regular tomato which allows for more plants to be grown in a small space.  Growing more plants means faster progress.  Space is always limiting when breeding new vegetables, even if I had acres of greenhouse space I could always use more to create more varieties a lot faster.

People overseas are breeding many new types of micro tomatoes, unfortunately we have no access to them in Australia as importing tomato seed legally is expensive and difficult.  To that end, if we are to have better micro tomatoes then someone in Australia will need to breed them.

Micro Tomatoes

Someone should breed better micro tomatoes
Micro tom, while cute as a button, is not the tastiest tomato in the world.  It is not bad, but it is not great either.  Someone should breed a tastier micro tomato in Australia.

Micro tom, while reasonably productive, could be a lot more productive.  Even though it takes up such little space it would be nice if it were more productive.  Even though it grows and crops well in a small cup of soil I still think the more productive the better.  Someone should breed more productive micro tomatoes in Australia.

Micro Tom grows cute red round tomatoes.  While this is lovely it would be nice to have more variety, apparently there is a small range of various colours and shapes of micro tomato fruit overseas.  Someone should breed several shapes/colours of micro tomatoes in Australia.

Micro Tom can and will grow at any time of year if protected from frost and many people overseas grow them indoors over winter.  Unfortunately if the temperature is too low it can not pollinate properly and can not produce fruit.  While this is only an issue in a small number of places that get cold enough for this to happen it is still an issue.  Someone in Australia should breed micro tomatoes that are more productive in colder temperatures.

One truss with lots of flowers, this would be a good cross for Micro Tom

Some micro tomato breeding ideas
Here are some of my micro tomato breeding ideas.  I have started some of these projects and am several generations through them with plans of releasing some of them soon, others I do not even have the other parent to make the first cross.

Different shaped micro tomato, everyone seems to love roma shaped tomatoes for some reason, so I have started to make a micro roma tomato.  It looks good and tasted great, it is not as productive as it should be but that can be fixed.  When it is more stable and perhaps a bit more productive I may try to sell the seeds through my for sale page.

Micro Roma tomato - the best tasting micro tomato so far

Multiflora tomatoes produce hundreds of flowers per truss, it would be great to have a multiflora micro tomato.  This will increase the productivity vastly making micro tomatoes more than an edible novelty and convince more people to grow them.  This is proving more difficult as the low percentage of leaf area of the micro tomatoes makes creating a tasty multiflora micro tomato a bit of a challenge.  I dont just want a productive micro tomato, I want it to taste good too.  It will happen, it will just take a little longer.

Finding the balance between lots of fruit and tiny plant, this micro tomato is under 9cm tall

Different coloured micro tomatoes are fun and pretty.  While getting the colours in is easy, getting a better tasting coloured micro tomato is the tricky part.  There is little point having an amazing looking micro tomato that does not taste great.  Green when ripe tomatoes tend to taste the best but people tend to shy away from them so I may concentrate on other colours to begin with.  Yellow, tangerine or stripey are always favourites, black (muddy brown) and high anthoycyanin lines are also options.  I dare say I will produce a few different things over the next few years.

Having tomatoes in the midst of winter is great.  Cold weather can prevent pollination in tomatoes.  I would love to one day grow a parthenocarpic micro tomato that can set fruit in cooler weather if protected from frost.  The genes here are a little tricky to work with and I dont have any parthenocarpic tomato varieties to use as parent stock so I have not yet started this project.

Breeding tastier micro tomatoes is interesting as growing conditions play a part in taste.  Different people have different ideas of good tasting tomatoes.  Taste is always going to be one of the traits I want in micro tomatoes.

Breeding new micro tomatoes would be simple and fast if we had access to many types of micro tomatoes with a wide array of genes, but in Australia we dont have access to many at all.  Things go a lot faster if the other parent is a dwarf tomato, but there are so few dwarf tomatoes in Australia that sometimes a regular tomato has to be used.  Luckily it is pretty obvious early on as to which seedlings are micro tomatoes and which are not so culls can be made while the plants are tiny seedlings.


Where to get micro tomatoes
When I have stabilised a few good lines I plan to name them and sell their seeds.  I will most likely list them on my for sale page when they are ready.  This probably wont be for a while yet as I do not have a garden or yard at the moment so progress is slow as everything is growing in pots and most of my seeds are stored away for the moment.

Micro Tomato Seedlings and regular tomato seedlings, it is simple enough to tell which are which

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Purple asparagus

I bought and planted some seeds of purple asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) before we moved here.  I think I got about 10 seeds in all, which is not many but at that time purple asparagus could only be bought from one place so I didnt have a great deal of choice if I wanted to grow it.

The seeds were small, black and unremarkable.  I soaked them in water overnight and planted them, then waited for something to happen.  From those seeds only 3 germinated, it was very exciting.  At that time I knew of no one who had ever grown asparagus from seed so was pretty much on my own to figure how to grow them.  I have grown many things over the years which people have told me are impossible to grow, so this didnt daunt me.

Out of those 3 tiny seedlings grew, then slugs or snails killed 2 of them one night.  After noticing the loss I quickly put crushed eggshell all around the last survivor to help protect it.  That one seedling was not killed but did sustain some snail damage from time to time and needed the crushed egg shell placed around it pretty often.

This one tiny seedling grew slowly, it died down each winter as asparagus must, and grew back larger each Spring.  Each Spring the snails would hammer it and I would protect it with egg shells.

Then it was dug up and moved here with us.  Considering that we moved in the height of summer the plant did not enjoy this move and its growth was slowed but it did not die.  I planted it into the soil at the edge of the vegetable garden near the fence.  Asparagus dies each winter and sprouts again each spring.  I am told it takes 3 years from seed to get a crop, but this plant had such a difficult start that it took a bit longer.

Purple asparagus spear emerging in early spring

Asparagus plants are either male or female.  Female asparagus tends to be a bit thinner than the male plants as they put energy into seeds and fruit, male plants grow thick and fat spears.  Most people kill off the female plants and only grow the male ones.  I had no idea if this plant was a male or a female, I didnt particularly care as I planned on keeping it regardless.

Purple asparagus spear

Last year (or the year before, I cant remember) this plant flowered for the first time, it is a female plant.  It grew a handful of red berries, most of which were eaten by birds and the seeds deposited who knows where.  I kept some berries and extracted the seeds.  I am yet to grow them, if I do they will most likely not grow true to type as many wild asparagus plants grow here and would have donated pollen to my plant.


What purple asparagus looks like

One question that I had when buying purple asparagus seed is what the plants would look like.  After searching the internet I found many pictures of purple asparagus spears, which looked amazing, but no pictures of the plant once the spears matured.  I wondered if they stayed purple or if they grew green like normal asparagus.

As it turns out, the spears are nice deep purple, then they turn green as the fronds emerge more.  The fronds of purple asparagus look much like regular asparagus, green and fluffy and beautiful.

While I am disappointed that it is not purple for its entire life it is still a beautiful plant.  Tiny birds like to hide in the fronds, some of them make nests in some of the other green asparagus plants that grow here and I hope that they decide to nest in the purple one some day too.

Purple asparagus starting to frond up, note the immature female flowers

What purple asparagus tastes like

Home grown asparagus, like many home grown vegetables, tastes far superior to store bought asparagus.  This is probably due to the freshness, it can be picked minutes before being eaten instead of being picked weeks earlier and stored/transported/stored again before being eaten.  We have a lot of green asparagus growing here, most of it is from seed that birds have kindly deposited under apple trees, along fence lines, and under electrical wires.  While it often grows in unsuitable places this does not stop it from being delicious.

Strangely I have only eaten purple asparagus a few times over these years.  I like this plant so find it difficult to eat it, I would hate to eat too many spears and leave the plant depleted of energy.  I find that it tastes much like the green asparagus that is growing on this property, only sweeter.  If you like fresh asparagus you will love purple asparagus.

I find it disappointing that I can not buy this in the shops as it is nicer than the green type.  Hopefully one day someone will remedy this and grow purple asparagus commercially.  Unfortunately that someone wont be me.  Due to health issues any form of large scale farming is not in my future.

One can cover the spears as they grow to produce white asparagus, these white spear are more tender and sweeter again. 

Purple asparagus, each frond gets green as it grows

Why grow asparagus from seed

Most people think asparagus can not be grown from seed.  I have even had people try to argue with me over this point.  The fact that asparagus are flowering plants that produces seed, and that I have planted seeds and grown asparagus from those seeds, seems almost to be moot points as they have their minds already made up and no amount of logic and evidence will convince them otherwise.

Very few people grow asparagus from seed due to the time it takes to obtain a crop.  I can understand that, it takes a few years to get a large enough plant and by then you may be too attached to it to be able to eat much of it.  Asparagus is a long lived perennial so the effort will be payed off by years of asparagus crops.  You need to be aware that growing from seed has disadvantages, but there are a few reasons that may make you consider growing asparagus from seed.

Asparagus can accumulate virus load and not grow as well.  There are currently no certified virus free sellers in Australia so growing from seed to remove the virus load is currently the only way around this.  Virus load is probably not a huge problem for asparagus around here though. 

Growing from seed would also ensure an amount of genetic diversity which, assuming that you grew several seeds, would make your crop a bit better able to cope with problems that arise. Some seed grown plants will out perform others in your garden even if they came from the same parent.

Some varieties are not for sale as plants anywhere and only available as seed.  You will not be able to grow these unless you grow from seed.  Some of these are excellent varieties and I dont know why they are rare, others are rare because they are not all that great.

I grew purple asparagus from seed as I could not find crowns or plants.  Some places sell purple asparagus plants now.  To be honest I would not bother to grow asparagus from seed if plants or crowns are available.  That being said I would NOT buy tiny seedlings in a punnet though, growing from seed would result in healthier plants than buying these stunted plants that have grown in less than ideal conditions and not being repotted for who knows how long.


Where to get purple asparagus

If you want to eat purple asparagus you will have to grow it yourself.  A few places sell seeds and plants these days.  I may grow some of the seeds from my plant, if any of them are purple I may offer crowns or plants on my for sale page.  If you are keen to grow out some of my seed I may be able to send you some but be aware that it may not grow true to type.

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Does chamomile have the same potential to cause methemoglobinemia as benzocaine orajel

On the 21st of November 2013 Vashra asked me about the potential of chamomile to cause methemoglobinaemia, apparently the same effect produced by benzocaine/orajel. Well, I always love to help, but my free time is nearly null, and now with a child making me change nappies and feed him every 2 to 3 hours, is ever more complicated. Nevertheless, I want to maintain the blog as active as possible and I am now using a few moments of my paternity leave to read a little more about what is bugging my readers brains. For starters, let me assume my ignorance and state that there are a lot of things here I am not familiar with, thus I decided to learn about them to make a little sense before thinking of researching adequate answers. 

Methemoglobinaemia - "is a blood disorder in which an abnormal amount of methemoglobin -- a form of hemoglobin-- is produced. Hemoglobin is the molecule in red blood cells that distributes oxygen to the body. Methemoglobin cannot release oxygen. In methemoglobinemia, the hemoglobin is unable to release oxygen effectively to body tissues." [1]

Benzocaine -  "Benzocaine is a local anesthetic (numbing medication). It works by blocking nerve signals in your body. " [2]

Orajel - a pharmaceutical used in adult and child oral care to counteract pain generated by infection and/or teething. [3]

So basically what Vashra wants to ask is if chamomile can cause a blood disorder in which an abnormal amount of methemoglobin is incapable of adequate releasing of oxygen into body tissues, apparently an effect previously observed as result of using Benzocaine. Benzocaine being the active substance of the pharmaceutical Orajel used, for the sake of the example, in calming teething pain in children.

By searching the web I came across a page referring the Food and Drugs Administration website, where one can find the immediate awareness alarm to several gels and liquids containing benzocaine and the observed cases of teething children poisoned by this substance. It occurs that benzocaine reduces the oxygen available in the blood stream and symptoms can  appear at any time point [4]. There is a special danger with over-the-counter products containing benzocaine as they are readily available, therefore it is quite important to reassure parents that there are different options on the market that can help relieve pain in children and toddlers.

Hot and cold gel packs mold themselves and fit various parts of the body, septic raw honey (not manufactures honey) is a potent anti-infection and anti-inflammatory natural product [5]. There are many folk remedies available, some might have a scientific explanation where others might live on myth passed from generation to generation.

When it comes to chamomile, it is known to help children suffering from colic and teething pain, but what about side effects associated to this natural plant? Well, I could find a few but nothing mentioning methemoglobinemia. I found mainly four toxic effects in humans caused by chamomile, 1) the normal allergic reaction in some individuals, 2) anaphylaxis (a life-threatening allergic reaction in people allergic to plants in the daisy family), 3) drowsiness, and 4) contact dermatitis [6].

Perhaps the biggest risk associated to the use of chamomile and vascular imbalance is the presence of coumarin (organic chemical compound) for its thinning effects. Coumarin has very mild blood thinning effects, though! Overall, I wasnt able to find any relation between methemoglobinemia and the use of chamomile.

If you know more about this issue, please help us build good knowledge on it by sharing your opinion in the comments section.

Cheers.

[1] Methemoglobinemia - Medline Plus, [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000562.htm], last visited on the 05th of December 2013, last update on the 31st of October 2013.

[2] Benzocaine topical - Drugs.com, [http://www.drugs.com/mtm/benzocaine-topical.html], last visited on the 05th of December 2013, last updated on the 01st of December 2013.

[3] Orajel, [http://www.orajel.com/], last visited on the 05th of December 2013, last update unknown.

[4] FDA warns... do not use this pain reliever... you could turn blue and die - Mercola], [http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/25/warning--fda-issues-alert-that-topical-anesthetics-may-kill-you.aspx], last visited on the 05th of December 2013, last update unknown.

[5] This bee product has enormous benefits for your health - Mercola, [http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/17/This-Bee-Product-Has-Enormous-Benefits-for-Your-Health.aspx], last visited on the 05th of December 2013, last update unknown.

[6] Integrative Medicine for Children, edited by May Loo, MD - June 2008.

[7] Web MD - Chamomile Herbal Information, [http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/lifestyle-guide-11/supplement-guide-chamomile], last visited on the 05th of December 2013, last update on the 13th of October 2012.

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Yacon Water Kefir

I have had milk kefir grains for some time now, the kids love it, I like it but find it a bit too sour to drink by itself, and Tracey dislikes the taste of it.  Kefir is good for you so I wanted to try water kefir.  Perhaps that would be a way for the kids to get more of the kefir goodness into their diet.

Recently we obtained some water kefir grains.  Water kefir is different from milk kefir, it is still very good for you though.  The younger kids do not like water kefir all that much (mostly because it is a bit bubbly), Igloo loves it, I love it and Tracey thinks it is ok. 

Kefir
Both types of kefir contain live and beneficial probiotics.  Basically they consist of "good" bacteria, yeasts and other microbes. These good microbes are eaten by you and some will colonise in your digestive tract and continue to provide you with benefits long after you have finished consuming the kefir.  There are many recipes for water kefir on the internet but we have been mostly following the one that came with the grains.

Yacon
Yacon contains inulin and other sugars which are not digestible by humans.  Yacon is considered a prebiotic, this means that it contains things that feed the good bacteria etc in your digestive system which help to keep you healthy.  Yacon tubers also taste great, it is a vegetable that is eaten like a fruit and is loved by kids.  Yacon is my favourite vegetable.

Kefir & Yacon?
If water kefir contains probiotics, and yacon contains prebiotics which feed the probiotics, then it made me wonder if I could culture water kefir on yacon and leave out all of the other things.  After internet searching I found many people who claimed water kefir flourished when using yacon syrup instead of sugar.  Some people culture water kefir only on water and sugar, many of these people were the ones saying that the yacon syrup was great.

The only problem is that I do not have access to yacon syrup, I grow yacon plants and have access to the delicious yacon roots.  I do not know how to make the syrup and I do not intend to find out, I certainly have no intention of ever buying yacon syrup!  Nowhere on the internet seems to mention anything about yacon root (which I grow) being used in water kefir.  There is no one saying that they have tried this and failed or succeeded, someone needs to try this and let people know if it works or not.  That is why I am writing this post.

Yacon kefir - all the bubbles are gone because I carried the jar outside to take a picture

This is almost certainly not the best way to do this, but it is my first attempt so I will write what I did, and what I think should be done differently to make it better.  At some point in the future I may write another post and say what I changed and how it worked (or did not work).


Yacon Water Kefir

Ingredients:
1 small peeled yacon root (about the size of my thumb, perhaps a bit larger)
1 small peeled and grated yacon root (similar size to above)
1/2 cup water kefir grains
4 cups water

Method
1) add water kefir grains and water to a jar
2) squeeze the liquid out of the grated yacon root.  I put a strainer above the jar and squeezed above this so that the liquid would go in but not the solids.  Discard the squeezed and grated yacon
3) add the peeled yacon to the jar of liquid
4) wait 2 days for the kefir to do its thing.  I do not put a lid on the jar but you need some way to prevent insects and dust from entering
5) remove the yacon root, remove the kefir grains, drink the liquid.  Pretty simple


Even before the 2 days were up I noticed a few things.  Firstly, grated yacon is delicious!  I think it would go well in a salad being grated like this.  Secondly the kefir was bubbling a bit, this tends to indicate that the grains are working well.  If the jar had a lid we may have had issues with the pressure.


What does it taste like, Would I do this again

It tastes alright, but nothing to write home about.  It is similar to how water kefir tastes when it is made on sugar rather than adding any kind of fruit.  The water tastes like it is bubbling, even when it is not, other than that it does not have a strong taste.  I could barely taste the yacon, if I did not know that yacon was in there I would not have guessed it.  Kind of like soda water.

I dont think I will do this again, or if I do I will change things around and perhaps add some limes.  I love how water kefir normally turns out and found this yacon kefir to be less than exciting.  I also prefer to eat yacon normally rather than to eat it after it has been kefired.  The water kefir grains did not multiply as much as I had hoped.  They did multiply a bit, and the grains had been in the refrigerator for a week which generally means that they wont multiply a lot, but I had high hopes.  The water kefir grains have been multiplying slowly lately and I had hoped that the natural sugars in yacon would fix this, apparently we just have to wait for the weather to change.

Interestingly enough, the peeled yacon root also tasted like it was bubbling after it is removed from the completed kefir.  The kids thought that eating the yacon was fun as it did not taste much like yacon, it tasted like it was bubbling.

I also found it interesting that yacon normally discolours reasonably quickly after it has been peeled, but even after two days in the kefir the peeled yacon root looked much the same as when I put it in the jar.


What I would do differently

Yacon kefir tastes ok, but not great.  Adding some kind of fruit or berries or something may have made it much nicer.  Adding some sort of juice or something to the finished yacon kefir certainly makes it taste great.  I dont know, I may try a few different things and then write a post about them.


Where to get yacon and kefir grains

I sell yacon crowns on my for sale page over winter.  I may offer water kefir grains and milk kefir grains for sale, if I do they will be listed on the for sale page too.  Kefir grains sometimes reproduce slowly, other times quite fast, so you may need to contact me to see if they are available.  I also sell a few other organic perennial vegetables and some organic heirloom vegetable seeds.

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Comparing Perennial Leeks with Regular Leeks

Perennial Leeks

Perennial leeks are rare and difficult to find in Australia for some reason, yet they are simple to grow and one of the best and most productive vegetables to grow for home gardeners.  I would hate to be without them again, if we ever lost them in a bushfire or something I would be devastated.  I have had a lot of questions about the perennial leeks from different people, so thought it best that I write another post and answer some of them.

Perennial leeks - note the baby leeks growing from their bases

 What are they, how to grow perennial leeks?

I have some growing notes here.  I will tell you a few things now that were not covered in my growing notes page.

Perennial leeks are an amazing plant, they are hardy, productive and delicious.  People often ask when to plant perennial leeks, we plant and divide perennial leeks all year.  When we harvest a leek for dinner I then plant the small baby leeks that are growing from the large ones base.  It is only over the hotter summers when the plants are dormant that we do not harvest leeks, even then I occasionally dig up the bulbs and plant them out in other places.  Even when we lived near Canberra we could divide and plant them all year, the frost and the heat does not seem to be too much of an issue with them.

Summers here are extremely hot and dry and the leeks tend to die down to bulbs, in cooler climates or even cooler years they grow all year.  They flower here but generally nothing comes of it.  One year after floods we had them set viable seed which I think was a cross between the leeks and elephant garlic, that year the flower heads also grew small leek bulbs in the same way that tree onions grow small onions on the flower stalk.  These things have only happened that once and I have not been able to convince them to flower since.

Some people ask me how they compare with other types of leek.  When I wrote my first perennial leek post I had never grown or eaten any other varieties of leek to be able to compare, since then I have grown and eaten some regular leeks so can compare them.  I considered buying some leek seeds to grow, but I have grown onion seed and find them fiddly so did not want to do that if I did not have to.  The leeks in the supermarket were so much larger, both longer and fatter than the perennial leeks, so we bought some for dinner a few times just to see if they were any better.  After cutting off the roots with a few mm of shank I put them in a jar with a little water and they sprouted.  We used to do that with the perennial leeks to build up numbers the first year that we had them so figured it should work with any leek.  It worked fine and the regular leeks grew well.  I then grew the two types of leek, perennial and store bought, in adjacent beds to see how they compared. 

Perennial leeks - I need to take a few more pictures for this post

Comparing Perennial Leeks with Regular Leeks

Below is roughly how they fared compared with each other.  Please try to keep in mind I only grew them over one year, I had an unknown commercial supermarket strain (or several unknown strains), and had small numbers of store bought leeks so this comparison is far from scientific:

The store bought leeks taste pretty much the same as the perennial leeks, no noticeable difference there.  Some people who I have sold perennial leeks to have claimed that the perennial leeks are sweeter or tastier, but I am not convinced that I could tell any difference.  Both types of leek cooked the same, neither one was tough or bitter or anything like that.

While the store bought leeks were larger, the perennial leeks grew faster and sent up a lot of babies and we ended up with a greater harvest of perennial leeks compared to store bought leeks on the same area of land.  So from a yield per area of garden the perennial leeks came out on top by a long way.  When harvesting perennial leeks there are always baby leeks that you can use as replacements, which maximises the use of space.

The perennial leeks reproduce slowly throughout the year, then around November they explode in numbers.  From one well grown plant I ended up with 128 leeks in 12 months.  During this time I would have been able to eat leeks as well as increase their number had I wished.  The store bought leeks did not flower in the 12 months, but I assume had I left them in for another 6 months or so they would have flowered and produced hundreds if not thousands of seeds.  I guess there is a trade off here, the store bought leeks would have reproduced more than the perennial leeks if they had more time, but we would not have eaten leek during that long time.  The time it would take to go from a seed to an edible leek is also a lot longer than to go from a baby perennial leek to an edible sized leek.

When saving leek seed it is advisable to grow out at a minimum of 80 plants to prevent problems with inbreeding depression, you would then rouge out any plants with undesirable characteristics (minimum numbers based on info from http://www.seedalliance.org/uploads/publications/Seed_Saving_Guide.pdf).  That is a lot of space to tie up each year just to produce leek seed for the following season.  Leek seed is only viable for a year or two, so you would end up having to tie up that much space all the time just to produce leek seed, you would then have to allocate another bed to produce leeks to eat.  Of course you could just buy leek seed each year, but then you may as well just buy leek from the supermarket to eat and use your vegetable plot for growing something else.  When growing perennial leeks you can grow a single plant if you wanted to and build up numbers from that, there will be no inbreeding, and rouging out is not needed as every baby it produces will be genetically identical to the parent (this is not exactly true as sometimes mutations pop up, but that is an in-depth topic that is best not covered here).  There is also no problem with perennial leek about having to isolate plants to prevent them crossing with the neighbours leeks which can be an issue if you live in town.  So from a sustainability point of view the perennial leeks end up as the better option.

Regular leeks can be grown as perennials, harvested close to the ground and allowed to regrow.  Perennial leeks are superior here as they can be grown and harvested the same way but continually reproduce and allow you to build up numbers if you wish.

Regular leeks are a bit larger, but the ones I grew were nowhere near as large as they originally were in the store, perennial leeks are a bit smaller.  I assume that if I grew the perennial leeks better they would be a bit larger, but I also think that regular leeks will always be a bit larger than perennial leeks.  If you do not divide them, the perennial leeks end up as a clump of hundreds of plants that are as thin as chives.  This can be a down side of perennial leeks, it can also be easily avoided by dividing some of them occasionally.

One of the store bought leeks grew with a red stem and looked nice, the perennial leeks were just green.  Occasionally a variegated perennial leek turns up, but other than that they are just green.  I like the look of the variegated perennial leeks myself but they only seem to turn up occasionally.  At the end of the day these are a food plant, looks are secondary.

To the best of my knowledge there is only one or two varieties of perennial leek in Australia whereas there are a whole lot more varieties of seed grown leek.  Some types of seed grown leeks are suited to warm climates and others are suited to cool climates.  Some grow long and thin whereas others grow short and fat, apparently each of these types is better suited to different climates.  I have sent perennial leeks to a few parts of the country and so far am yet to find a climate in which they are not productive.  This lack of choice with varieties is not an issue as I am happy with these perennial leeks, if they were not fantastic then this lack of choice would matter a whole lot more.

From what I have been told perennial leek will cross pollinate with any variety of regular leek and they say that the offspring are less desirable than either parent, so if you grow both it is best to remove the flower stalk from the perennial leek to prevent problems.  I have never let regular leeks flower so can not say too much about the subject.  Perhaps if you were to let a regular leek flower next to a flowering perennial leek you could grow the resultant seed and perhaps get a new type of perennial leek!

Perennial leek bulbs - they only die down to bulbs some years if it is too hot or dry

My conclusion

Over all the perennial leeks were a lot easier to grow, they were producers of food throughout the year, they were producers of huge amounts of food for a small area, and I know that if I forget about them for a year (or ten) that they will still be there waiting for me.

After growing the two types of leeks and comparing them I dont think I can be bothered growing regular leeks again and will stick with the perennial leeks.  I understand that there are many varieties of regular leeks and someone should preserve them and prevent them from going extinct, but that someone should not be me at this point in time.  I am happy with perennial leeks and at this stage want to spend my energy saving seed of other things.

I do have perennial leeks for sale as well as some seeds, herbs and other perennial vegetables on my For Sale page.  I am not keen on posting outside of Australia unless you have already contacted your countrys quarantine and are confident that they will be allowed through.  That being said I am happy to try my best to answer any questions about perennial leeks from people even if they are overseas.

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Yacon the worlds most civilised vegetable

Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius formerly known as Polymnia sonchifolia) is a perennial root vegetable from South America.  

If you have never eaten yacon then you are missing out on something truly special. 

When Tracey asked our five year old to describe yacon he said: "They taste like apple. They look like a tube and grow underground like a potato. The leaves feel like a soft blanket."  To be honest I think that is as good a description as any.

How I first grew yacon

I read about yacon years ago on the Lost crops site and eventually tracked down a small rhizome to buy over the internet.  I spent a bit of money to get yacon and had no idea if it would grow for me or even if I would like it.  You plant yacon in spring, then you wait as it grows happily, if you have frosts it is best to let it die down over winter before harvest.  After planting it I waited patiently as it grew, still never having tasted it, all the while tempted to dig up a small root to try but trying to be patient so the plant could do its thing properly.  The yacon grew about waist high and looked nice, towards the end of the growing season it dropped a few leaves and looked a bit shabby.  The yacon then grows a small yellow sunflower like flower some years, unfortunately they require more than one clone in order to set viable seed and as far as I am aware there is only one yacon clone in Australia.

Yacon flowers

Then winter came, I was very excited, but the frosts did not kill off the tops so I waited until we had a hard frost as frost apparently makes the roots sweeter.  We then had a hard frost, and the yacon looked a little burned but overall was not too bothered, even though it does not look like it yacon is a pretty hardy plant.  After a few hard frosts the tops eventually succumbed to the cold.  I carefully dug up the large and brittle tubers and tried one, I liked it but it was nothing special.  The yield was amazing, from the one tiny rhizome that I initially planted I ended up with a dozen much larger rhizomes and a bucket full of large tubers, but if the taste was not great I did not want to use the space on them regardless of the yield.  Everything I had read said that if you leave yacon for a few weeks after digging it up it gets sweeter, so I waited for a few weeks for the tubers to sweeten, I then tried another one, I loved it!  

I wish that yacon was more readily available in Australia, even if the plants were more available for people to grow at home it would be great, this is why I started to sell plants.  I am rather fond of perennial vegetables, once you plant them you pretty much will have them forever.

Yacon, note the light brown edible tuber and the purple propagative rhizome

How to grow yacon

I have included some growing notes here that describes things a bit more clearly.  Yacon are interesting plants to grow, they pretty much look after themselves, they are hugely productive, and they are perennial.  From what I have read it can grow and be harvested all year in frost free places, apparently without frost you just wait an extra couple of days after harvest to let it sweeten before eating it.

I have never heard of anyone who has grown yacon complain of any pest or disease that affects the plants.  Yacon seems not overly picky about soil conditions, planted in rich moist soil it gives the highest yields, but it still gives a decent yield on poor soil with minimal water.  Yacon prefers full sun but will also provide a decent yield in part shade, it is well suited to growing under trees to utilise an otherwise wasted space.  One thing that yacon does not like is rocks and stones in the soil, the tubers will still grow and give a large and delicious yield but they will be misshapen due the pressure exerted upon them from the stones etc in the soil.

Unlike jerusalem artichokes to which yacon is related, yacon poses no weed threat, it grows well yet it remains civilised by not taking over the vegetable garden, in fact other plants seem to grow better when yacon is grown near them.  Yacon exudes inulin and other sugars from its roots which attracts and feeds earth worms as well as a host of other beneficial soil life.  I am told that yacon is readily colonised by mycorrhizae which promote plant growth in a number of ways.

Purple Yacon rhizomes ready to be divided and planted

Yacon is edible, delicious and healthy
Another civilised thing about yacon is that every part is edible as well as being good for you.  Some other vegetables have some parts you can eat and others you can not, or some things which must be eaten cooked as they are toxic if raw, or irritating hairs or spines that must be dealt with, all parts of yacon can be eaten either raw or cooked.  The large sweet crunchy tubers are the part that we like the best, we do not tend to eat any other parts.  Mostly we eat the tubers raw, some people just dig them up and eat them as is but I peel them as the skin can taste a little like resin.  I find that if I slice them thin they taste the best.

Yacon is crunchy and sweet, after cooking it retains its crunch but tends to take on the flavour of whatever it is cooked with.  It can be used in the place of water chestnuts in recipes.  Even though yacon is very sweet the sugars are not digested by people which makes it fine to be eaten by diabetics.  Yacon is high in inulin (which is different to insulin), inulin is a natural prebiotic which feeds the good bacteria in your body and helps to exclude the bad bacteria.  This means that as well as tasting great yacon is good for you.

Once harvested yacon tubers seem to last anywhere from a few months to a year depending on climate in which they are stored.  One year we had far too many yacon tubers so decided to freeze some of them.  Once frozen they last seemingly forever.  To eat them it is important not to thaw them as they go black and slimy looking.  I remove the tubers from the freezer, peel them with a vegetable peeler, slice them and eat them.  When frozen yacon tubers are easy to peel and easy to slice.  When frozen yacon tastes different to when it is raw, it is difficult to describe but it kind of tastes like frozen banana custard.  My kids seem to like frozen yacon even more than they like raw yacon.

Another remarkably civilised thing about yacon is that the part that you eat is different to the part that you plant to grow a crop for next season.  Unlike other vegetable crops where you have to decide how much to eat and how much to save to replant or you have to decide how many plants to let go to seed, you eat all of the yacon tubers and plant all of the propagative rhizomes.  As yacon is propagated by division and does not produce seed you do not have to worry about caging or separating to keep seed pure or growing enough plants to avoid inbreeding depression.  Growing yacon by divisions means you never have to worry about the neighbours growing GM crops that will cross pollinate and ruin your plants, the yacon that we grow and eat today is genetically the same as the yacon plants that the Incas domesticated and grew.

Small yacon plant almost ready to be harvested after frost

Harvesting Yacon

The different parts of yacon are easy to tell apart as the tubers are large and brown and look like sweet potato, the propogative rhizome is purplish and small and has growing points, you will see these when you harvest yacon.

I look forward to yacon harvest each year, not only because it means that in a few weeks I will be eating sweet yacon, but also because of the unmistakable yacon smell.  It is a smell that cant be described, a smell that says that winter is here, a smell that helps keep me connected to the land and the seasons, a smell I miss over the rest of the year.  When we harvest yacon I carefully dig/pull up a plant and shake it gently.  The edible tubers fall off in a civilized pile and what is left in my hand is for dividing and replanting.

Yacon leaf,  it "feels like a soft blanket"

The leaves are large and fuzzy, as Igloo says they "feel like a soft blanket".  I have heard that in Peru the leaves are used to wrap food before it is cooked, kind of like a banana leaf or a grape leaf, but I am yet to try this myself.  A herbal tea can be made from the leaves which helps to even out blood sugar.  The leaves can be picked and used straight away, or they can be left somewhere out of the sun to dry and then used to make the herbal tea later.  Unlike many herbal claims this claim that yacon leaves lower blood sugar levels seems to have been tested and proven to be true.  I have only made tea from the leaves once and found the taste to be a little odd, kind of like peppermint mixed with something.  I didnt really like it, but I didnt hate it, I am glad to say that the taste was not very strong.  It would probably taste nice if you mixed it with something that tastes better or something that has a strong taste that would overpower the yacon.


Where to buy yacon plants in Australia

As I already mentioned, if you have not eaten yacon you are missing out on something really special.  The chances are that you will never see yacon in the supermarket, so if you plan to try some or if you want your children to try some you must grow your own.  I do sell yacon rhizomes (a bit larger than the ones in the pictures above) here.


Ecclesiastes 3:1-2  There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens; a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,

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Yacon Pineapple slaw

I love yacon, it is sweet and crunchy.  I mostly eat yacon raw, I just peel it, slice it thinly and eat it.  We have tried eating it a few other ways and most were good.  It tends to take on the taste of whatever it is in with so is reasonably versatile.  I have even used some of our yacon roots and water kefir grains to make yacon water kefir which was nice enough even though I prefer regular water kefir.

I normally leave the yacon in the soil until I want to eat it, if I happen to leave it for too long the plant simply gets larger and stronger and returns a larger crop next time.  Recently we have moved from our property into a rented house in town, as such I dug up a small number of yacon plants to grow as well as a heap of the tubers to eat.  Being so hot and dry out here the tubers do not last overly long.  I wanted to find a few new ways to eat yacon as I can not stand the thought of wasting it.  I looked on the internet and stumbled across yacon pineapple slaw.

Yacon growing in a pot - it belongs in the soil

I found a nice sounding recipe, then changed it a fair bit, and made it with a group of school children.  It was delicious and super easy to make.  I am putting the modified recipe here partly to share it and partly so that I have it saved somewhere so I can make it again.

Ingredients:
Yacon tubers, 1 large tuber or a few small ones
1 can of pineapple (or a real pineapple peeled and cut into small pieces)
The juice of 1 lime or a lemon (lemons are the poor cousin of the lime, but they are cheaper)
1 chilli (this can be left out)

Method:
1) Juice the lime (or its poor cousin the lemon)
2) Peel the yacon tuber
3) Grate the peeled yacon
4) Add lime juice to the grated yacon.  Mix together.  You have to do this as soon as possible otherwise the yacon will turn black
5) Cut pineapple into tiny pieces, add pineapple and any juice to the yacon
6) Remove the seeds from the chilli.  Cut up the chilli into tiny pieces
7) Mix it all together and serve

It really doesnt get any easier than this, and it tastes great.  It would be easy enough to add other things to this too as long as they are cut up tiny.  I think something crunchy and relatively tasteless such as shredded cabbage would bulk this out nicely.

Some of the more tropical and fruity tasting chillies could also work well in this as they would add taste but would still be crunchy.  There are a heap of tropical tasting chilli varieties, some have no heat while others are super hot, but few are available unless you import the seeds and grow them yourself.  One great place I have found for chilli seeds is pepper lover, they seem to love what they do and tend to include extra seed packets with orders.  Only some species can be posted to Australia so please do check the AQIS BICON database first.

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Survivor Tatsoi

When we moved in here there were no vegetables, only empty vegetable beds, which was great.  Before we moved in there was a decent flood.  After we moved in we had another rather large flood.  A year or two passed, then a vegetable seedling grew in amongst the grass and weeds in the vegetable garden path.  It was from a vegetable that I have never planted, a seed that was here before we were.  I noticed it one day as I was mowing the weeds/grass in the vegetable garden.  I decided to mow around it as I liked its style.

This is one of the descendants of the mystery vegetable

That one determined little seed sat dormant through at least two floods, waiting patiently through several extreme summers, sat quietly through some cold winters, germinated in amongst tall grass and established weeds in a path that was trodden on several times a day by myself as well as my kids.  It then evaded being eaten by snails/slugs/poultry/birds/rodents and grew into an amazing little plant without a great deal of help from anyone.  This plant had earned my respect.

I wasnt terribly certain what it was to begin with, I knew it was some type of brassica.  I thought it was some form of Asian green, but having very little experience with them I did not know which one.  I gave it some water to keep it alive but generally forgot to water it.  I tried to gently pull some weeds near it but was scared of pulling it out too so left it to struggle against them.  The kids stepped on it a few times because it was growing in a rather inconvenient place.

More of my survivor tatsoi plants

I eventually figured it was most likely tatsoi.  I like the determination of this plant, it is a true survivor that beat the odds.  We ate some leaves but I let that single plant mature and flower, then I carefully collected the seed.

Brassicas tend to need other plants for cross pollination but I got a small amount of seed.  Many of the seed pods had no seeds, many of the seeds were too small to germinate, being so hot and dry the aphids covered the flowers at times, even with all this stacked against it the survivor tatsoi set a decent number of viable seed.  Quite often brassicas will have low or no germination if the population is too small, I had one individual and no other brassicas.  Things did not look good.  I planted a lot of the seed in the hope of enough germinating to get this strain going again and almost all of them germinated!

Tatsoi in a vegetable bed, they no longer grow amongst grass

Brassicas also tend to suffer from inbreeding depression with small populations, so I did a large grow out from the seed collected from that single parent in the hopes of overcoming this.  So far the results appear to be pretty strong and healthy, I have not been able to see any lack of fitness and have a decent number of plants from here on.  I will be allowing all of these plants to flower and cross pollinate one another then I plan to collect seed from them all to maintain some small amount of genetic diversity.

What I have now is a strain of tatsoi that has overcome extreme hardship on pretty much every level.  I call it "survivor tatsoi" as I do not have any way to tell what cultivar it would have originally come from.  I hope to keep this strain going indefinitely from here on if I can.

I will probably be able to sell seeds of this tatsoi after the current batch flower/set seed and I test the seeds for germination rates.  I do not sell seeds if the germination rates fall to 85%.  When I do collect seed and test them they will be listed on my for sale page.

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