Re: [gardeners] jicama
Kay Lancaster (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 20 Jan 1999 14:32:12 -0800 (PST)
On Wed, 20 Jan 1999 MAllen4543@aol.com wrote:
> Thank heavens somone has asked this question. It seems that most of the mail
> has been about jicama and I have been trying to work out what it could be over
> here. I got to thinking it was Jerusalem artichokes but no. Looking forward to
> being enlightened.
Jicama (HEE-cam-ah), aka yam bean or Mexican turnip, is Pachyrhizus erosus
or P. tuberosus, a couple of wierd beans with edible tuberous roots, and
vines up to about 20 ft in length. Pretty good source of vitamin C, but
very few calories. You can actually dig and eat the tubers any time...
which is easier than storing them, as the starch tends to be converted to
sugars, and then they get rather odd to cook with. The tubers usually
look like flattened turnips to me. And if you want to grow them, keep
the day length shorter than about 14 hours... they won't make tubers
at day lengths much longer than that.
George, if you can keep the older plants going, you can probably get
bigger harvests every year. Biggest I've seen is a tuber of about 50 lbs.
Kay