Anthony Powell

Jane Mulberry wrote:
I'd like to try dahlias. I read that there's quite a range of flavours depending on the variety, some taste good, others don't. Are there any you recommend?

The one I've managed to keep going for a few years, that I obtained from a council planting as they were being uprooted, I found to be 'Wars of the Roses' (); you don't see it about much. I enjoy eating that, and I'm able to minimise slug damage. I don't know if there's much between them, Lubera had some on sale - seem to have stopped, maybe they've realised lots of varieties can be eaten. Go for large-growing sorts for bigger tubers, easier to peel. Maybe the ray florets will give a clue as to root flavour.

Dahlias are also perennial edibles, originally grown for their tubers before Europeans became besotted by the flowers. Nice fried or roast, slices keep their crispness in stir-fries. Ray florets also goodin salads.
Oca - before the tops get frosted, they make a great sorrel-ish salad.

You might like to try growing Groundnuts (Apios americana) up your Sunchokes. One supports the other, and both call for a good ground clearout! I get a lot of slug damage; I'm able to overwinter and restart groundnuts in pots in spring without slugs, but the sunchokes get blitzed regularly. Had them under sheeps' fleece this spring, slugs still got them.
Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) can be used as a root veg. I've used it when I wanted its location for something else. Can't remember everything I used it for, but some went into a flapjack.

greg mosser wrote:oh, we’ll open one up and check, but i suspect it’s actually a decorative but inedible gourd. they’re really tiny.

Our local UK supermarket sells 'Munchkin' edible pumpkins, orange ones size of a man's fist.
I grew some of the seeds, only managed immature fruit before slugs started taking too much interest; cooked what I could rescue. Still here!

Here's my way of talking about CO2:
I've two bottles, gravy browning in water, one 280ppm, other 430ppm. The difference is visible. They're equivalent to CO2 in the atmosphere, pre-Industrial Revolution and now. While the gravy browning is absorbing light, the CO2 absorbs infra-red. What there was pre-Industrial was enough, the difference is already causing chaos. It's idiocy, but we're still adding to it. Totally insane that we're adding more than the year before, every year!
To get a grip on it, we need to move away from economic growth and improving standards of living, both based on fatness of wallets. It works by innovation, seeking more cost efficient ways to extract from holes in the ground, make stuff, sell it and dump in other holes. More and more, faster and faster... can Nature cope?
We need to move to Quality of Life, measured by smiles - sharing, caring, mending, living with nature.

To replicate my bottles, take 4 x 1 litre bottles. 14 grams of gravy browning in the first, 21.5 (impossible on scales measuring no fractions of grams, so 22 g) in the second. Make up to a litre with water. From each pour 20 grams into the third and fourth bottles, and fiil to 1 litre. The result is qualitative, not measurably accurate. The first two are equivalent to half the air above our heads, the latter two to looking through about 100 metres of air.

Around here in Cheshire, UK we have many small-fruited pears, called Hazel pears, or Hessle pears. They're very quick to ripen. It's known they were sent by rail for dying uniforms during the World Wars.
I don't know whether that's an option for unripe pears.

M Ljin wrote:My yam (Chinese) is four years old and has not spread. They seem to be very resilient and blend right in with the bindweed, which they resemble. They are climbing up a small willow tree. I have eaten a few aerial tubers raw and they are good—they very much resemble Bolboschoenus fluviatilis in flavor.

Is Bulboschoenus aka Scirpus fluviatilis? as detailed here - https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Scirpus+fluviatilis

I suspect mine are Dioscorea polystachia, obtained from a friend, who possibly got his from RealSeeds in Pembrokeshire, UK. A lot of their leaves are opposite, and the bulbils are tiny.
My tubers are planted individually in rose pots - tall plant pots. They're kept indoors in that state, I start watering in spring to encourage growth - but they'd probably start anyway. I'm aware slugs like them, so I'll only put them out when there's a good length on (raspberry canes are useful for climbing)).
Summer quarters are on an old dustbin of good compost. It's got a small hole 6 to 8 inches up - in a wet summer I've had the water table up to the surface without that. The yams send their roots down into the compost, no further than the water table (that'll be right at the bottom this dry year). Tops grow into a hazel, I introduce them to hanging twigs (less chance of snail attack).
In autumn I lift the pots and protect from frost. Then tip the bin and harvest the roots, dry them off and store in a plastic bag with my spuds. But first I check the pots - some will have given their all to the root in the bin, and there's no root in the pot. So I ensure there is a length of root in the pot for next year.
Hardiness: there was one year I was late harvesting, and freezing weather had arrived. Mush in the pots. Mush in the bin - until right at the bottom, some unfrosted root. In the ground the frost wouldn't have penetrated so deep, and I may have had a root breaking from deep. But, as others have said, extracting this root is no joke! Deep, brittle and thicker at the bottom. Someone cross it with carrot...

I store my tubers for eating in a plastic bag alongside my potatoes, in a cool kitchen cupboard. I found my last one sprouting about a month ago (in July), so potted it up. It's probably Dioscorea polystachya, obtained from a friend  who probably got it from Real Seeds in Wales (RealSeeds). It produces a few sub-pea size aerial tubers, I haven't seen flowers.
My technique: start the tubers in tall pots, after frost place well-sprouted plants on a bin of potting compost located under a tree with handy dangling bits to give them a start into the canopy. Slugs like them, so give them nothing to climb up. Before really cold weather starts, lift them: what's in the bin is profit, we hope; what's in the pots is for next year. So check there is tuber in there - it may have given its all to dive deep, in which case put some tuber in. The pots and tubers for eating come indoors. I don't start watering until Spring.