Yacon Growing Guide

Yacon is taking the world by storm - it's a delicious, unique tasting vegetable, best known for being a prebiotic superfood. Yacon is also hugely beneficial to your soil, so it's a win-win here!

This particular strain of Yacon has been many years in the making - selective breeding by some of NZ's best, has created a breed which is believed to have the highest percentage of healthy Fructooligosaccharides in the world... in other words, it's great for gut health.

Yacon Tubers (which grow from the crowns) are delicious eaten raw - they have a sweet, juicy, apple-like flavouring, with a lovely crunch (I'm eating one sliced up as I write this!).

Perfect for adding into salads, coleslaws, or juicing.

Yacon should be planted around September/October

 

Yacon Planting instructions...

Yacon need plenty of space to grow, so it's important to plant them at least 70cm apart (they grow into impressive 2m tall beauties!)

It's a good idea to work in some well rotted compost to your planting area prior to planting.

• Loosen the soil to a depth of around 40cm, and plant your Yacon crowns 10cm deep.

• Yacon are fairly pest and disease resistant, so you can just about plant and walk away, watering only when dry.

• Harvesting the Tubers (which are the edible part) takes place after the plant has flowered - cut the leaves back (or if you've had a frost, there's no need to cut back, as the frost will have done this for you!) and using a garden fork, raise the crown and cut off the Tubers for eating. Leave the crown in the ground to reproduce new Tubers for next season.

 

Once harvested, the tubers will keep for months if kept in a cool dark place. They are delicious raw or cooked (if using raw a bit of lemon juice can be used to stop them browning).  

The crowns will grow larger each season and can be divided for more Yacon plants.