Oca Growing 2020

[jayb]

Oca growing in 2020 turned into growing them 2021. Shamefully I did not harvest most of my plants last year.

Fast forward to this year and I had 4 pre-planted rows of oca!
Most of the year they have grown poorly and they are rather overrun with weeds. Some of the plants flowered earlier in the year and I saved a few seed pods.
In the last few weeks they have grown on well and put on a lot of leaf growth, a few plants are flowering and yesterday I picked two little ripe pods and wonderfully this morning I have 6 tiny little seeds. Plants are wonderful


Flowers and hopefully developing seed pods


So bright and cheery

[Jang]

How lovely and promising for future seed growing discoveries. I have oca flower envy as mine have never flowered. All one flower-shy variety I suppose.

[jayb]

No, that won't help at all, a little variety is needed.
And for here, I think the wind and rain yesterday and today may well have put pay to flowers and seed pods

[Galina]

Oca and here are still a struggle as we do not get the long autumns. Mine are currently lightly frosted at the tips. I will put them in a flower pot on the window, but I despair at growing them here properly. The other vegetable that hasn't done anything and needs a major growing rethink it the Giant Bolivian Achocha. So I am very happy at your success Jayb. And mine will go on the windowsill. Where last year they kept growing all winter and I had a tuber harvest in spring before planting out.

[jayb]

One thing I remember reading some time ago (sorry, I can't remember where) was covering oca plants for part of the day (I think the end was thought the better part of the day) to bring daylight hours down and trigger tuber formation. A bit faffy perhaps but then when your earlier frosts hit they would already have some crop formed which could draw off the fading plants.

I think my plants will have been too overrun with weeds to do well, even so I'm happy to have them growing, onwards, upwards and all that.
I'm sorry your ocas are struggling with the early autumns, very frustrating with daylight-sensitive plants. I wonder if the oca project is making any progress with this, it might make all the difference?

Shame too with the Achocha, what have you in mind?
My poor babies never got planted out this year and sat in their little pots, they tried flowering and a saw some embryo fruits but I don't think much chance of anything.

[Galina]

The achocha has the tiniest green fruit and flowers which is actually better than last year. Two months behind UK. I think the next step is to sow in January, rather than April to somehow get these two months back and hope for the March equinox to start flowering. Oca is now in pots indoors. When we get a conservatory, it will be easier to keep it over winter. But maybe the windowsill does indeed provide the partial sun cover and this is why they grew tubers last year. There were a few tubers but small grape size at best. I fear I am not quite dedicated enough to partially cover them, and hope they adapt. Here we have sunshine, unless it rains, the cloudy but dry weather does not seem to exist. Overall it is colder, but summers can be hot. Except like yesterday, when the weather comes from Italy and we get 24C during the afternoon. Also there are not the clouds that would prevent an early frost as in UK with clear skies at nights we have October frosts, not frost free sometimes into November, Last frost date is a little earlier, no June frosts so far. But my observations are only based on a couple of years.