Hardy Yam - Dioscorea

Unfortunately for me, your link just goes to a blank search page.

There are several species of Dioscorea that are called hardy yams. They vary in edibility and palatability. Most require some degree of preparation, due to toxins, or unpalatable mucilaginous sap. To further confuse the issue, there are reports of the same species being both edible and toxic. Most are considered very invasive in the US. Some produce small, peanut-sized bulbils, others produce larger golf ball to baseball sized "air potatoes"

It is important to positively identify the plants that you have, and sometimes the variety as well.

Here we grow D. polystachya, "Chinese yam or cinnamon vine". (It is often misIDed as D. batatas or D. oposita) It's one of the few Dioscorea species that can be eaten raw, although it's a bit slimy. The small, peanut sized bulbils are prolific.
D. alata or purple yam is reportedly a staple food crop in some areas, although I have no experience with the species and can't speak for it's use.
D. bulbifera is reported to be very invasive and to grow throughout the southEast US. This is the typical, large "air potato" often thought of when people mention "wild yams" Some report it as edible with special preparation, others report hospital visits after trying to eat it. Again I have no experience with the species and can't comment on it's properties. It has been suggested that there are at least two sources for this species with differing toxicities. Some are though to originate in the far East, other's in Africa.

Bulbifera has multiple strains. The wild stuff is near-inedible [requires a great deal of blanching etc] with toxins, but there are cultivated varieties in its native regions that are used for agriculture.

Good luck getting your hands on the edible varieties though >_<

My Hardy Yam Dioscorea batatas is producing mini-tubers.  I plan to plant these in favorable spots in the kitchen garden.  I'm not sure if I should plant them immediately, or save some in the fridge over the cold season.  Maybe I'll try both tactics.

Tyler- Did your mini bulbils take root and produce a vine yet? I planted some yesterday that had fallen off of my Dioscorea alata.

I haven't planted them yet.  I'm not sure I want to devote space to this plant that doesn't like my climate - in dry years it doesn't come up from the tuber at all.  The yield of mini-tubers is small.

The hardy yam is such a fun and rewarding plant.  I think they are really beautiful and graceful the way they hang a curtain of leaves and tubers.

Hardy Yam

I used to grow these when I lived in the Pacific Northwest.   They grew great near Seattle where we were in Zone 8.  I grew them for years and they produced a lot of arial and in ground tubers.  They did not have any trouble from pests and seemed to thrive in the ground or in containers.  
They are a really fun plant because they grow quickly and will vine easily on whatever structure you put them on.  

They are easy to share with friends.  You can just pop off a tuber from the vine and give it to a friend.  It will grow in a flower pot or they can grow it out in their garden.  

They would make a fun shady arbor or give privacy to a balcony.

This guy is growing hardy yams over his driveway.  The arial tubers fall of when they are ripe and they are easy to collect.

Here they are growing hardy yams in Tennessee.    He says the chickens love them and suggests growing the vine over a chicken paddock so the chickens can eat the aerial tubers when they fall.

Here is a little more history on the hardy yam.  

The hardy yam comes from temperate China and can survive the winter in cold regions.  It can be eaten raw or cooked.  It can be used in any way you can use a potato and can even be dried and ground into a flour to make bread.   The hardy yam tuber can be stored for over a year without sprouting.

Hardy Yam growing in Pennsylvania!

Hey.

Does anybody here grow or have any other experience with chinese yams or maybe other species like japanese yams? They seem like a really interesting perennial starchy tuber plant with staple crop potential even in cold, temperate climates that doesn't require much care, they're even invasive in parts of the US. Chinese yam(Dioscorea polystachya/batatas) is quite winter hardy and can grow down to USDA zone 4-5 from what I've read. Apparently unlike many other yams they can also be eaten raw although their skin is said to be an irritant, and overall their flavour is said to be pleasant and reminiscent of potatoes and making a very good mash. They are allegedly very popular over in East Asia in China, Japan and Korea. Chinese yams are very easy to propagate as they grow small tubers in the air that can be planted to grow new full sized plants/vines that produce the big root tubers, and it tends to grow new shoots/suckers from the base that can be transplanted. Some sources say the air tubers are also edible but I don't know about that personally, and they are small. The plant itself is a perennial so it just keeps on giving new root tubers to harvest each year and even though it takes several years to reach full maturity it starts producing decently sized tubers already the next year of planting.

If it's true that these plants are both hardy and very productive with little care needed and being highly edible then they seem to be almost a no-brainer to try out growing?? I am really going to try to get a hold of some seed/air tubers myself, these just seem to be too good to pass up on.

So the tubers look something like this:



And the plants/vines look something like this, looking at it you would almost think it's just a weed:




Air tubers:

I planted three tubers this spring. I haven't harvested any yet, but mine looked just like your photos. They grew very well for me with nominal care (I'm in zone 7B).

One thing I read about them is that they can spread and become invasive, so I planted mine in a raised bed at the end of my hoop house. They didn't try to take over, or anything, but we'll see how it goes in the future.

I got one of these over at my yarden.
Picked it up at a permaculture friendly nursery.
I thought it had died,  but it was still going and had made the air potatoes.
I threw some of those around and left it at that.


The differences between the wild invasive varieties and the domesticated varieties, if there is one, isn't clear to me.
I have a large Asian supermarket me, they have these and other roots available.
Can one establish a bed from grocery stock like this?

these are growing wild along many roadsides in my area. i’ve grown them intentionally at times, but mostly collect the aerial tubers from wild ones these days. digging the main tubers is definitely way easier in the garden than going after the big tubers of the wild ones. they seem to have a knack for wrapping themselves around every rock as they go down.

I think the variety I grow is Dioscorea Japonica. It hasn't grown for me outside, I think my summers are too cool for it to get going, even in the polytunnel. I don't see it till quite late in the spring (although not as late as Apios, which really does seem to need warmth to get started!) The tubers grow quite deep, so take a bit of digging to find. Some people grow them in lengths of drainpipe to make them easier to harvest. In one year from tubers mine don't grow very big: maybe 4 inches long and and inch diameter, but they are very tasty - similar to a really nice baked potato in flavour and texture.
Digging it up:


Cleaned ready for baking:


Beautiful spider hiding in foliage:


aerial tubers:


Although I scattered some of the tubers around my tunnel I haven't found them growing, maybe the mice have eaten them? I've not tried them yet, but if you had a lot, they could be used like a dumping or pasta I expect. Since mine haven't grown big in one season, I am planning on leaving them a bit longer, to make them more worth the effort of digging. I find the foliage very attractive.

Nancy, those yams in your tunnel seem quite beautiful!
I can't tell how thick they get, would they grow good shade in a hot summer?
I have a greenhouse that could use a shade giving vine.



I grow a lot of things in raised lasagna beds about two feet deep/high.
That may eventually be legitimate soil, but fir now they are half finished compost.
Do you think the yams would grow well in such a bed?
They seem to go deep.
I wouldn't mind huge roots growing under the beds as long as some significant part grew in the beds where I could get to them.

I also grow in barrels a lot, so maybe that would be a better choice.
I've been wanting to add growing containers to my chickens composting area, to grow shade/food vines.
I was planning on   bottomless cylinders 4' tall , to keep the hens off while letting the vines have access to the compost.

It occurs to me that the infamous potatoes tower might actually work with this plant.
I wonder how it would behave growing on a nitrogen fixer like Siberia Pea.
Maybe I could plant it in a garbage can of leaves like I have with the sunchokes.
I could plant some with the 'chokes, to see who would win!
Either way, if they grow in containers, that's two crops that are easy to grow and harvest or keep in the ground, and that like money on the bank.

Sorry William, I just saw your questions:

Would they grow good shade in a hot summer?
In my tunnel they grow quite leggy so they do not shade very much. The pictures in the thread above suggest they can be a lot denser, so I guess this is a "it depends" answer.

Do you think the yams would grow well in such a bed?
I don't see why not. I suspect that as with most plants the more you feed them the better they get. I didn't add anything when I planted mine, although the soil is not bad, it's not particularly good either.

I also grow in barrels a lot, so maybe that would be a better choice.
That would make havesting much easier. I gather the roots will just wind round the pots. This has happened to baby plants for me before I planted them out. You'd need to keep on top of the watering I guess.

I must dig mine up and see how they've done after a couple years growth....

Very interested. I was just about to buy some New Zealand Yams (Oko?) but couldn't justify the cost of shipping when I can't guarantee a crop in my zone. These being cold hardy make it seem more likely...do you know of a tuber or seed source?

I'll have to check with the local nursery too.

I have a Chinese yam plant growing on my land despite the most neglectful method of trying… I’m pretty sure I just found these seeds I must have bought but it was beyond the time to try to grow them from seed and flung the packet in a bed of tree mulch I had full of weeds and strawberries and some coneflowers.  Lo and behold late in the summer I noticed a weird vine I hadn’t planted, and it had those red edged leaves like someone in this thread has posted.  So, I think I have a Chinese yam vine that grew up from the most neglectful method of sowing I could manage.  I’m in zone 5b, and I’m excited to see what it does next season.  I love any edible plants that can thrive on their own despite neglect and non ideal circumstances.  Let me rummage around and see if I can find one of those pics I took for indentification of the leaves …. Found it!  It wasn’t exactly thriving, but I wondered what the heck this small vining plant in my weed infested strawberry bed near a coneflower was

Melonie Corder wrote:Very interested. (zip) These being cold hardy make it seem more likely...do you know of a tuber or seed source?

I'll have to check with the local nursery too.

It seems Strictly Medicinal Seeds list chinese yam bulbils if you can't find them locally. They say the bulbils are slow to start, which I don't remember being the case. The established plant for me is late into growth, but I think this is temperature related.

I have some volunteers in my garden here. I identified them this past summer by aerial tuber. I didn't try eating the propogates yet, but my neighbor said they're good and sticky like the underground tuber.

The underground yams we eat all the time from the farmers market or supermarket. They're good raw. We sometimes use them as a substitute for eggs in recipes. They make a nice topping when processed into a bowl of white sticky mush! They also pair really well with nori (seaweed).

Mostly replying to follow the thread!

I'm going to look for these the next time I go to the Asian grocery store. I recall seeing something like that and didn't know what it was. I always like to try growing something new. 🤗

What I want to know is, can I grow them from tubers at the Asian supermarket? I can get Nanaimo tubers pretty easily here.

Can’t hurt to try and find out.

I believe you can grow them from grocery store spuds.
Check out David the Good on YouTube, he grows many varieties of yam.

I planted some from a tubers they were selling as food items at the asian market. Chopped it into smaller sets, hit em with ash, buried and watered them. Don't think a single one didn't sprout. Put em in a contained area, their little runners are crazy aggressive. And they can travel a good distance in a hurry. All that said, I'm super excited to see how it turns out.

I ordered some from a lady on Mercari. I planted last fall in a pot and they just came up last week. I'm in Texas and it's starting to hit the nineties in temp. Lots of rain this year. I thought they might have rotted. Glad I waited and didn't reuse the dirt for something else.
I planted the air tubers.

Hi Kellrae,
Welcome to permies and congratulations of your first post

Hi Kellrae Welcome!
I expect the Dioscorea yam will like Texas better than Skye!

Nancy Reading wrote:It seems Strictly Medicinal Seeds list chinese yam bulbils if you can't find them locally. They say the bulbils are slow to start, which I don't remember being the case. The established plant for me is late into growth, but I think this is temperature related.

For reference I planted more aerial tubers of both D. japonica and D. polystachya this year. On my window sill, so quite cool (12 degrees Celsius maybe 55 F). The chinese yam sprouted several weeks earlier than the Japanese yam. Makes me wonder whether the chinese yam may actually do better here....I put them outside too early and they got bashed in some unseasonal wintry showers last week. Hopefully they will recover. I'm hoping to plant them in my new Tunnel when it is ready!

They are considered an invasive species in some places. They should grow easily. They are an excellent substitute for Potatoes as they are LOW in carbohydrates. Peel, Grate, wash off slime, towel dry and fry them like hashed browns. Cube them in soups like potatoes. Slice and pan saute in disks.

When i make hashed browns i literally cant tell the difference.

How to grow chinese yam video from Youtube

J wexler wrote:They are considered an invasive species in some places. They should grow easily. They are an excellent substitute for Potatoes as they are LOW in carbohydrates. Peel, Grate, wash off slime, towel dry and fry them like hashed browns. Cube them in soups like potatoes. Slice and pan saute in disks.

When i make hashed browns i literally cant tell the difference.

Welcome to Permies! Thanks for the serving suggestions.
I was surprised at the idea they were low in carbohydrate and wonder if we are talking about the same thing? Dioscorea seem to be about the same as potatoes (about 16-17% raw by weight), and I don't consider potatoes low in carbs. Maybe you're thinking of oca - that seems to be about 12% carbohydrate?

I got 3? small pieces of tuber (Chinese yam) from some small local seller (in Tas, Australia), 2 years ago.  First spring they did take what seemed like a long time to emerge from the pot, then started growing quite well (still in pots), then my partner forgot to take the top off the makeshift greenhouse while i was away and they fried.  The tubers were still good but still small & I grew them in a much bigger pot last summer and had stakes in there for them to climb up, though they didn't end up being tall enough.  They were happy enough.  The tubers grew larger but still not enough that I would want to eat them rather than regrow them.  Maybe I'll put them in the ground this year, either that or make a very large pot out of food grade drums I have in abundance.  I did roast a bit of the tuber and they were delicious.  
Now I'm looking for the best way to deal with the tubers through winter..... I hope I haven't kept them too dry.  

(By the way, someone mentioned oca in the thread, NZ yam, they are oxalis, they grow very well with enough water and are delicious but being oxalis familiy they do warn you about eating too many as they're high in oxalates, like spinach and a lot of things though.  I didn't water mine enough this year as our pump broke late summer, and the tubers form I believe as the days start getting shorter...so I had a poor harvest)

Two years ago in a container in which I thought was a sweet potato after some months something started growing. First it only was a viny stem without leaves, very strange. Then it made leaves too and I thought 'this is a strange kind of sweet potato'. Many months later I saw a video of David the Good, showing his Chinese Yams. Then I knew my plant was a Chinese yam!
During the winter it disappeared, but the next spring it grew again. It still looks like a Chinese yam plant, but not as 'weedy' as in the photos here. It's one long vine with leaves at both sides, climbing in my coniferous hedge.
Now winter is starting again and it's still in the same container. Maybe I should add some more compost, give it more space to grow? If so, when do I do that. now or early spring next year?

Hi, Inge, have you emptied the pot and checked the tuber?

I grew mine from air bulbils and they reached fist size the first year. I am going to replant and maybe next year they will be basketball size. Or maybe if I cut the tubers up and plant the pieces I will multiple the yield.

These things took forever to emerge for me in year 1 - they really like it hot. But once they get going they are very resilient - survived a lot of neglect so far in mediocre soil.

I've planted them all around my chicken coop - they trellis up the sides and drop their bulbils into the arena. I'm leaving the roots in the ground unless they're in a container. The roots are even slimier than okra when you cut into them, but their flavor is very mild and you can blend/mix them into anything

Hi Inge, I suspect if it is still in the original pot, you may find the tuber has curled up at the bottom of the pot as they seem to want to grow deep for me. I would  think any time while they are dormant it would be OK to put them into a larger pot. If you leave it too late in the spring they may start growing (and you could damage the growing parts) so it is easier done whilst they are just a tuber.
I'm hoping I haven't lost mine, which I was hoping would be out in my polytunnel by now. I'm definitely going to try and pot them on if they survived my neglect over  the summer!

Hi May and Nancy. I forgot I wanted to check it. Maybe tomorrow ...