When I bought my three little yacon  – well, what do I call them? – small pieces of root with a bud on it – I thought that I might not see any results. How wrong I was!

I did everything exactly as the instructions said and planted them in a pot each, they survived the winter in a frost-proof studio and later were moved into the greenhouse. They started growing and again, as the instructions said, I put two in the ground on the allotment and one in the back garden. No problem in growing them they reached at least 1m high and looked very healthy.

As the weather is very mild I didn’t want to harvest all the tubers in the garden so I very carefully scraped the soil away and pulled out a beautiful tuber, just like it said. It really looks like a dahlia tuber.

I washed and peeled it and sliced it very thin. It tasted like a very crunchy mild radish. Next time I’ll stir-fry it.

One good thing is that this plant has a number of the small round bits with a growing point, those are the ones to save for next year. I’ll make sure I shall grow quite a few.

Next thing will be to bring some sand home from the allotment, put it in a box, harvest the tubers and store them in it.