Yeah, the crown tubers are a little fiddly to store. I generally pot them up in the soil they grew in and winter in my unheated basement. The soil needs to be on the dry side as theyre prone to rot. If left in the open air they dessicate and die. Ditto the edible tubers. They keep a year in a covered bucket filled with the soil they grew in.
In terms of growing conditions, etc. Id say they like lots of organic matter and plenty of water. Probably like potatoes, their yield really suffers if they dont get enough water when growing tubers. Even more so, Id guess sonce the tubers are much juicier than potatoes. A healthy plant will get 4-6 ft tall and 3-5 ft wide.
I stuck some in a potted citrus for some reason and left them there two years. They made a pretty decent yield the second year, so much so that I had to tear into the pot to harvest it all before it got out of control. If you’d like to try again I can probably send you a crown in the fall.
Thats a one gallon freezer bag btw, full from that yacon that I stuck in the pot with a big seedling citrus. There was one enormous tuber that I couldn’t get out. It was too wedged in there and kept snapping into bits. Ive seen tubers 1 ft long. They’re probably~ 3 lbs at that size.
Yes, More inflation ahead in 2024 , I just received two emails from big bank and shipping service raising fees today. Many businesses still hurting from Covid, 99 cent store just went under, they took too much debt during lockdown is my guess. Get Ready Boys and Girls, its going to get wild.
the problem with saving is that inflation erodes the value of your savings. unless you invest, your money is worth less with every turn. I asked my bank about CD’s recently and they had exactly ONE that exceeded the current claimed inflation rate (which is grossly understated IMO) and exceeded it by quite a small margin of 1.1 % or something to that effect.
Looks like this flyer was from the early 1900’s. The generation that grew up in the next 15 to 20 years after this flyer came out probably don’t share the same trust in investing. Or maybe even saving for that matter. Putting the little money they had into producing food is likely what helped them survive. Good lessons to be had there.
I’m not sure what the craziest thing about this story is. The fact that the lady is shocked that things at Whole Foods are overpriced, or the fact that the New York Post is searching TikTok for news stories.
From 1914—18, definitely a WWI-era poster anticipating America’s involvement.
Color me skeptical whether this or any Victory Garden effort can be successful, government statistics notwithstanding.
There are, after all, constraints with regard to supply of seeds, gardening tools, supplies and equipment, and materials required for preservation — not to say limitations in people’s practical gardening experience and knowledge. Perhaps these obstacles were not so evident in the deep past when self-sufficiency was still within living memory.
It doesn’t stop politicians from romanticizing what it takes to plant and care for a garden, let alone what one gets from the experience.
And there’s always the shortage of canning supplies for shelf-stable preservation. At Walmart you can buy jars prefilled.
And I also wonder during World Wars and times of Victory Gardens, how easy was it for people to actually get their seed. Was seed rationing ever a thing?
In fairness, few people need to save seeds either. I realize that there are advantages to saving your own seeds, but I think the people most cognizant of those advantages tend to gloss over the effort involved. Depending on the type, it can be a fair amount of work to properly collect, clean, label, and store the seeds. Sure, for something special it is worth it, but in general? I doubt it.
Case in point, while I value my personal time far too much to ever save seed from most anything I can buy for just a few bucks, I did spend some time last year cleaning, drying, and storing some melon seeds, but only because those were special varieties I managed to get from Ukraine, and it’s really not clear at all if I’ll ever be able to get those seeds again without flying to some post-Soviet country.
People saved seeds back then because they were dirt poor, and because it was really hard to get anything other than what was available locally. Seed catalogs, and more recently online seed stores, completely obviated that.
Granted, if the world economy comes crashing down all of a sudden, I’ll start saving seeds. I won’t have everything, but I’ve got plenty of last year’s store bought seeds to be fine, and I doubt that in a post-apocalyptic world I’ll really be all that bothered I don’t have any purple lettuce seed. : )
Planning on saving seed if ever forced to reminds me of people who buy MREs but never taste them. If they ever have to eat them, they might be in for a unpleasant surprise.
Practice makes things easier.
All that said, I haven’t been saving as many seeds as I could. I am hoping to this year.
That’s a great point. Plus if you wait to start saving seeds until you need them, then you may not even be able to get the varieties you want and that will do best for you.
