Oca

[mrsbusy]

Hi - has anyone tried growing Oca?
I have 10 tubers arrived today - I'm thinking maybe grow them in tubs.
Any tips / advice??

[Jungle Jane]

There’s a thread here that has helpful advice,haven’t grown it myself,good luck with them

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...a-and-how-deep

[mrsbusy]

There’s a thread here that has helpful advice,haven’t grown it myself,good luck with them

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...a-and-how-deep

Thank you Jungle Jane.
Just read through that thread and it was very informative.
I did try to find any previous posts about oca but nothing came up - but I didn't search that far back. I didn't realise oca had been around that long!

[ameno]

What I've found after growing it for several years is that starting it off in pots indoors isn't really necessary. You can if you like, but you can also just plant it direct in maybe early April, as you would potatoes. Oca leaves are frost tender, but then so are those of potatoes. Oca is no more tender than potatoes are, and like potatoes you can earth them up to protect from late frosts.
Oca also dislike a lot of heat or strong sunlight. They do best in partial shade, growing large and lush, whereas in strong sun tend to remain smaller and are rather prone to some sort of stem disease which resembles potato blackleg (although it probably isn't actually the same pathogen).
You'll find they don't grow much during the hottest part of the summer, and then start putting on a lot of growth from late August onwards as things start to cool off again.
This was probably mentioned in the topic linked above, but they do most of their tuber growing late in the season, so the longer you can protect them from frosts, the bigger the crop you will get.

[Jungle Jane]

I didn’t use the search here,I searched in gooogle I wrote - grow your own forum Oca & a few threads were listed