Plan for root crops

Here I'll lay out a rough idea of how many of which roots I would grow and eat on this site on an annual basis. I'm only including truly perennial, plant-replant perennials, and self-seeding biennials. We've had very poor success with growing annual root crops (carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, etc), most likely due to a combination of slug pressure and our unwillingness to baby the tiny plants (tilling/killing the soil into a fine seedbed, weeding, and watering).

Seasonal availability

I've found from our harvests this year that we have plenty of roots in the fall, winter, and early spring, with jerusalem artichokes, skirret, mashua, and yacon forming the bulk of our harvests. Wapato, oca, and canna lily all have potential for providing substantial harvests, but I only try in this post to estimate the future contribution of oca. For now I'll assign wapato and canna lily to the category of "minor roots", which add some diversity to our diet and to the garden, without any individual species providing a significant harvest.

We need to plan most carefully for root harvests from mid spring through late summer. Annual roots could fill the gap, but I'm not planning for them in our future harvests.

Summer harvestable roots	Minor roots
Potato	Evening primrose
Camas	Solomon's seal
Dandelion (year round)	Lovage
Yellow asphodel (year round?)	Sweet cicely
Campanulas?	Fennel
Cinnamon vine bulbils	Cinnamon vine taproots
Scorzonera (year round)	Sea kale
Grape hyacinth	Lily
Triteleia sp	Earth chestnut
Brodiaea sp	Woodland chervil
Dichelostemma sp	Burdock
Erythronium sp	Dahlia
Annual roots	Daylily
	Scilla
	Orpine
	Parsnip
	Chinese artichoke
	Wapato
	Canna lily

For details on these plants, see my notes on perennial roots part one and part two.

Consumption

Daily average

I figure I could eat about 2 ounces per day of garlic, elephant garlic, shallots, and other perennial oniony bulbs. On top of the garlic, I'm targeting 12-14 ounces per day of other roots. I suspect I'll eat more roots in the winter, and fewer in spring and summer when I have more greens and fewer roots available.

Monthly root consumption

December - March (four months)
Harvesting skirret, jerusalem artichoke, and minor roots from ground as needed. All mashua, yacon, and oca should have been dug after the first hard frost; now eating them from storage.
Root	Pounds (all 4 months)
Skirret	30
Mashua	25
Oca	25
Jerusalem artichoke	10
Yacon	10
Minor roots	5
April
Skirret and stored roots starting to sprout, so eating the last of them. Relying more heavily on jerusalem artichoke
Root	Pounds
Jerusalem artichoke	12
Mashua	5
Oca	5
Skirret	3
Yacon	2
Minor roots	1
May
Not much available
Root	Pounds
Jerusalem artichoke (preserved via fermentation)	10
Dandelion	5
Scorzonera	3
Yellow asphodel	1
June & July
Early potatoes & some other roots now available as summer drought kicks in. Harvest all camas to cook as one big batch.
Root	Pounds (total for two months)
Camas	20
Potato	6
Jerusalem artichoke (preserved via fermentation)	5
Yellow Asphodel	5
Cinnamon vine bulbils	5
Dandelion	4
Scorzonera	3
Grape hyacinth	2
August
Mostly relying on starch-rich potatoes and cinnamon vine bulbils, with miscellaneous inulin roots providing some variety
Root	Pounds
Potato	8
Cinnamon vine bulbils	8
Yellow Asphodel	3
Scorzonera	3
Dandelion	3
Campanula sp	1
Grape hyacinth	1
September
Similar to last month, but cinnamon vine bulbil production may have slowed down??
Root	Pounds
Potato	10
Cinnamon vine bulbils	3
Scorzonera	3
Dandelion	3
Yellow Asphodel	2
Campanula sp	1
Grape hyacinth	1
October
Skirret available again!
Root	Pounds
Skirret	10
Potato	10
Jerusalem artichoke	8
Minor roots	2
November
Assuming we don't get a hard freeze yet, so not harvesting mashua/oca/yacon yet
Root	Pounds
Skirret	16
Jerusalem artichoke	11
Minor roots	3

Annual root totals

Root	Pounds to eat	Pounds to replant
Skirret	59
Jerusalem artichoke	56
Garlic/elephant garlic	45	5
Potato	34	5
Mashua	30
Oca	30	5
Camas	20
Cinnamon Vine bulbils	16
Dandelion	15
Yacon	12
Scorzonera	12
Minor roots	11
Grape hyacinth	4

Land required

I won't try to give square foot requirements for each root, as I would mostly operate on guesswork. Jerusalem artichokes and mashua yield us about 3 pounds per square feet, and I suspect I could grow them together to make even more efficient use of space. Yacon, potatoes, oca, and skirret in the sun should all yield .5 pounds per square foot or more. So all in all I'll assume a conservative average yield of .5 pounds per square foot, giving a requirement of about 700 square feet of growing space.

Note on jerusalem artichokes

To make the inulin of our jerusalem artichokes digestible, I've started cooking them for 2-3 days as we run the woodstove (usually one fire in the morning, and one in the evening), so that they cook for at least 10 hours total. If we didn't have the wood stove running anyway, it wouldn't make nearly as much sense to rely so heavily on this root as a staple. (Though I still need to experiment with fermenting the jerusalem artichokes--many people do this, and I've heard it helps with the inulin.)

Roots as chicken fodder

Prioritize yield and ease. I think mashua and jerusalem artichoke make the most sense, though I have to admit that our chickens have not been very excited about jerusalem artichokes cooked for 1-2 hours til mushy. I haven't yet tried feeding them roots cooked for 10 hours, or tried feeding them mashua.

If chickens will eat cinnamon vine bulbils, and if the chickens don't peck the young shoots to death, these could work very well as a self-foraged summer starch.