Water chestnuts

[Snadger]

If you like crunchiness...............Armadillo's are they way to go!

[veggiechicken]

If you like crunchiness...............Armadillo's are they way to go!

I'm rather partial to a tortoise pie myself. Maybe I could grow some turtles in my water feature?

[snakeshack]

if you can get them fresh and keep them in a bowl over winter in a frost free place they grow in the spring to produce a floating pond plant the "chestnuts" are produced to overwinter.apparently one species is a real problem in the usa see
http://www.waterchestnut.org/Assets/PDF/wcfactsheet.pdf

[veggiechicken]

if you can get them fresh and keep them in a bowl over winter in a frost free place they grow in the spring to produce a floating pond plant the "chestnuts" are produced to overwinter.

At last, a sensible reply (unless of course this is another wind-up!!)
Have you tried growing them? Could I buy the fresh chestnuts in a Chinese store or is there anywhere else that you can suggest? Thanks.

[planetologist]

Thanks Planetologist. Have you tried growing them? I'm growing oca this year for the first time but have yet to taste any. Looking forward to it!

Yes, this is the second year that I grow them. They don't have much taste, nor apparently nutritional value, but they have an interesting texture. I haven't harvested this year's crop yet, but last year made a stew of pumpkin and yacon that was a nice combination. I also grow oca, and think that deserves more space than yacon. Oca is also easier to propagate, as you can get ~30 tubers from a single plant, whereas I've had some of the divided yacon die and only managed to maintain my stock of three plants this year.

[veggiechicken]

Yacon sounds more difficult from the description on RealSeeds whereas Oca seems quite easy. I had about 10 tubers to start with - so on your reckoning I should have about 300! Wow!!! I think they may be a bit cramped in their dustbin. Do you grow them outdoors in open ground? Any tips please for an Oca novice.

[planetologist]

Yes, my 30 oca tubers are in a flat bed outdoors that is ~6 m2, so 10 in a dustbin does sound cramped, and maybe you won't get 300 tubers. I'm an oca novice myself, but the 30 plants do cover the available space, so I'd do that again: put in individual small pots at harvest time, overwinter indoors in an unheated room, plant out through cardboard mulch after the last frost, water if it's extremely dry, otherwise forget about them until the frost kills them.

[veggiechicken]

Thanks planetologist. The leaves are falling off my plants but they're in the greenhouse so protected a bit from frost. I presume that the longer they grow, the larger they will be so I must be patient a while longer.
Since mine are in artificial surroundings, can you tell me how deep the tubers are when grown in the soil please? I'm wondering whether I can plant small clusters of ocas amongst other plants in the garden and unearth the ocas without disturbing anything else. I don't have a conventional veg garden!!

[Two_Sheds]

I chuck sliced radish into a stir fry for that chestnutty-type crunch

[Two_Sheds]

"Water chestnuts grow best in gardening climates with long hot summers". That's not here then

[veggiechicken]

We can all dream! Like the radish tip, although, bizarrely, I have great trouble growing radish. perhaps its the long hot summers in South Wales!

[Two_Sheds]

I can't grow radish really either. The 2% that don't have cabbage root maggots in them have been chewed by slugs. Plus they don't get enough water on my sandy soil

[veggiechicken]

I suppose the maggots and slugs give the stir fry an extra bit of protein...

[Two_Sheds]

No !

I is a vegetarian

[veggiechicken]

Glad to hear it - me too. There are so many people on here with strange fetishes about things like bacon butties that I thought maggots and slugs might also appeal to their tastebuds.