Discovering Yacon - Harvesting, Propagating, Planting and Tasting!!

Join me for my first ever yacon harvest after letting these two plants grow undisturbed for a couple of years here at Huttons Valley Permaculture. In this video, we dig up the tubers, split the crown to make multiple new plants, and do a taste test comparing freshly harvested yacon against tubers cured for a week. 0:00 Meet the Yacon: Peruvian Ground Apple 1:43 Why I'm Harvesting Now: Frost Signals 3:05 Digging Technique to Avoid Fork Damage 6:00 Splitting Crowns for Easy Propagation 7:45 Curing Tubers for Natural Sweetness 9:11 Livestock Forage: Ducks Love Tubers 10:14 Planting Out the Swale Food Forest 14:30 Filling Gaps to Suppress Weeds 15:47 Raw Taste Test: Fresh vs. Cured What this video covers, drawn directly from the day's work: Digging and Harvesting the Yacon Crown See how I approach harvesting a frost-affected yacon plant, including how far the tubers spread out from the crown and the technique I use with a fork to lift the plant while minimising damage. I also share why I chose to harvest one plant now and leave the other untouched because it is flowering for the first time. Propagating by Crown Division Watch how naturally the yacon crown splits into multiple viable plants. I demonstrate separating the energy-storing tubers from the growing points, and you will see I end up with six new plants from just one harvest. I explain how frost knocks the top growth down but the crown remains protected underground. Replanting and Spreading Yacon Across the Property I replant one crown back in the original spot with a thick grass mulch to insulate it over winter. The remaining divisions are taken out to my roadside swale, planted in sheltered spots to protect new growth from frost. I discuss a key strategy for this plant: positioning it so my ducks can eventually access the tubers themselves, just like they do with the Jerusalem artichokes growing beside the chicken coop. Curing and Taste Testing Fresh vs. Cured I set aside the harvested tubers to cure with my pumpkins. I give one a wash and peel, noting the skin is not pleasant to eat. The plan is to taste it immediately and then compare it to a tuber that has rested for a week, since yacon is known to convert its starches to sugars when left in the sun after harvest. This is a practical look at integrating a new perennial food into our system, from multiplication to livestock food potential. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔔 SUBSCRIBE TO HUTTONS VALLEY PERMACULTURE Join me on the journey to bring back nature's abundance. 👉 Subscribe:    / @huttonsvalleypermaculture   If you enjoy my content consider a donation. It will help me diversify my plantings in the food forest and through out my gardens. Thank you!! Link below. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━