Amazing traditional Andean ulluco production

Found this video completely by accident and found a farmer from the Andes producing ulluco/melloco in the traditional way. Kinda envious because I couldn't do that in my soil as it currently stands.



Also has a video on mashua, but other than seeing how big the harvest is, I didn't glean too much interesting stuff from it. But my Spanish is rusty and the dialect throws me off. You can probably translate the subtitles if you're on a computer.

Very interesting, I had never heard of that plant before. There is a German wikipedia article on it.

The man in the video talks about being part of the very traditional and somewhat reduced diet of oca, mashua (have to find out what this is), ulluco and corn.

What a lovely dark rich soil he has! On the next field there seem to be broad beans.

Anita Martin wrote:Very interesting, I had never heard of that plant before. There is a German wikipedia article on it.

The man in the video talks about being part of the very traditional and somewhat reduced diet of oca, mashua (have to find out what this is), ulluco and corn.

What a lovely dark rich soil he has! On the next field there seem to be broad beans.

Yeah. These are all traditional Andean crops (other than the broad beans, which have unfortunately supplanted the traditional tarwi.) I've been wanting to grow them all since I found out about then almost 15 years ago, but this year looks like the first year that I'll get the chance. They won't grow well in most parts of the world because they're short day tuberizers (IIRC, ulluco will set some tubers early, but the main crop forms under short days.)  I'm most parts of the world, that's after the first fall frosts, which will kill the plants. Mashua and oca will perform well in my climate, but ulluco is still pretty challenging from what I've read.

There was a group growing ulloco in the UK a few years ago.Unfortunately it was found that the stock has potato threatening viruses, so the project was voluntarily halted before I was able to try growing it. I gather all parts of the plant are edible, so you can eat the leaves during the growing season. Very beautiful colour tubers too.
It was fascinating to see the growth style of the plants on the video. I hadn't appreciated how pretty it is! Thank you Matt for sharing.

(Now I must look up Tarwi.....that may do well for me too)

Tarwi is a lupin with large seed pods. You can get it to eat in Latin American shops (I have found it in London sold as chocho). I haven't tried growing the seeds although may see if I can get it to grow. It's pretty good to eat, in Peru they cook a paste with a salty soft cheese. Lupins are unfortunately toxic so getting the seeds edible is a job and a half...in the Andes they place them in running water for a week, alternatively you soak it and boil it repeatedly until the scum stops appearing, it's not very practical to do.