Jeff Lubell

I have lots of slugs and snails that seem to particularly like carrots and green beans in spring, though they also make direct seeding of most other things hard once summer rolls around. This year I noticed that they avoided some turnip rooted chervil seedlings (carrot relative) that were interspersed with garlic plants (grown close together for green garlic) while eating every single one of the seedlings in another bed. So I'm thinking I might try placing a ring of garlic plants around the periphery of some beds and then planting sensitive plants into the middle. Anyone ever tried this? Does it work? Thanks!

Thanks for the input, Robin. I am growing these primarily for the small air tubers rather than for the larger yams (though I will eat them too when they get big enough) so I like the idea of storing and replanting the larger tubers. I don't know why I didn't think about that.

I have three plants, so my latest thinking is: (a) leave one outside and cover it well; (b) dig up one, pot it, and put it in the garage to overwinter around the freezing point; and (c) store one larger tuber for replanting next year.

Did you overwinter your plants last year and if so, when did they emerge? Were they frost sensitive when they emerged or frost hardy? Thanks!

Thanks. Glad to be a forum member. I'll look forward to input from forum members. Jeff

I recently planted three Chinese Mountain Yam plants (Dioscorea batatas) from Oikos in a large potato grow bag in a protected interior spot of my Vermont garden. I am looking for some advice on overwintering the plants.

Has anyone successfully overwintered them in zone 4b? If so, what kind of protection did you use, if any? If I need to, I can move the grow bag into my garage (usually a bit above 32 in the winter as it is under our radiant heated bedroom floors), but my preference would be to leave the plants in situ if they will survive. Presumably, I'll cover them in a deep bed of straw and maybe even build a structure on top of that. I am thinking of digging up one of the plants and bringing it in as insurance, plus I can save some of the air tubers for replanting, but I've heard the air tubers are bigger on older vines so I'd prefer to let the plant grow for multiple seasons.

Another question: when the foliage comes up on the Spring, is it frost hardy?

Thanks in advance for any advice!