Let's grow perennial root vegetables

Ready to Grow Perennial Root Vegetables?

Do you grow perennial vegetables? What about perennial root vegetables? Let me guess... sweet potatoes? What about skirret or oca? It turns out there are a lot of perennial root vegetables and even if you live in a cold area there are several that could work for you.

This week's blog post is all about perennial root vegetables: 11 Perennial Root Vegetables for Your Garden.

A quick note... in this blog post I include plants that produce an underground harvest regardless of if the part you harvest is technically a root. Perennial onions is an example of this. This keeps things simple which for the scope of this blog post makes sense.

The 11 perennial root vegetables covered in this post are:

1. Arrowhead—Sagittaria latifolia
2. Egyptian Walking Onion—Allium x proliferum
3. Skirret—Sium sisarum
4. Sunchokes—Helianthus tuberosus
5. Springbank Clover—Trifolium wormskioldii
6. Achira—Canna discolor
7. American Groundnut—Apios americana
8. Chinese Artichoke—Stachys affinis
9. Common Camas—Camassia quamash
10. Oca—Oxalis tuberosa
11. Pacific Waterleaf—Hydrophyllum tenuipes

What are some other perennial root vegetables that could be added to the list?

Gardening with Perennial Root Vegetables


*Springbank Clover - Image Credit: Eric in SF (Wikipedia)

One of the challenges with perennial root vegetables is adding them to a traditional vegetable garden. A number of these root vegetables tend to spread--sunchokes for example. Plus you need to dig them up to harvest them which can disturb other vegetables.

So what do you do?

One option is to create separate beds for your perennial root vegetables. This gets around some of the issues but does mean you need a bit more space and  you miss out on the benefits of a polyculture.

Another option with some of these is to grow them in a food forest environment or at least around some larger perennial plants such as trees and shrubs.

I like this last one the best since it allows for a polyculture and all the benefits that brings.

Of course you could also just stick with the ones that don't spread and are harvested yearly like oca. Then it is really no different than growing potatoes.

What about you do you garden with perennial root vegetables? If so how do you add them to your garden?

Pick 1 Perennial Root Vegetable to Grow



While perennial root vegetables may be harder to include in your vegetable garden I think they provide a lot of great benefits just like perennial greens and perennial vegetables in general.

I'm going to try growing at least 1 in my new kitchen garden this year. Right now I'm planning on adding Pacific waterleaf to my new kitchen garden in a shady area on the north side of the beds. I might also give oca a try.

So here is my challenge for you. Pick 1 perennial root vegetable to add to your garden this year. If you are already gardening with perennial root vegetables then try adding 1 new type. Leave a comment saying what you are going to add to your garden.

If you need help picking out 1 then don't forget to check out this week's blog post which covers 11 perennial root vegetables.

I look forward to see what perennial root vegetable you are going to grow this year! Also, if you are one of the first to leave a comment on here you might even get a surprise in the form of pie or apples

Also, if you want to learn more about perennial vegetables in general I would check out the awesome book Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier which covers over 100 perennial vegetables (including root vegetables not covered in the blog post) (yes that link is an affiliate link). I own the book and reference it a lot. Your local library may have it if you don't want to purchase it.

Thank you!

Perennial Vegetables Series

- Plant Once with Perennial Vegetables
- 11 Perennial Greens You Will Love to Grow
- 11 Perennial Root Vegetables for Your Garden

I've had really good success with Egyptian walking onions. It grows so well, it was almost hard to kill!

I'm really excited to plant some sunchokes too this year, and I'm also going to plant some sweet potatoes and horseradish.

I'm getting hungry thinking about a good sweet potato with cinnamon sugar and butter, and horseradish cocktail sauce with some shrimp this summer!

Cassava is real easy, so are yams. I grow cassava in my garden.

This year I'm trying two species of Yam and two varieties of Taro.  Not sure if I will be able to overwinter the tropical Yam.  So far the Taro are alive.  I've been covering them when it drops below freezing.  The Yams have not sprouted yet and probably won't until it gets quite warm for extended periods.  Of course they could just be rotting down there!

I've enjoyed learning about Yams and Taro from David the Good:  [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC208478ECji1rdkDDbB0vHQ[/youtube]  

Steve Thorn wrote:I've had really good success with Egyptian walking onions. It grows so well, it was almost hard to kill!

I'm really excited to plant some sunchokes too this year, and I'm also going to plant some sweet potatoes and horderadish.

I'm getting hungry thinking about a good sweet potato with cinnamon sugar and butter, and horderadish cocktail sauce with some shrimp this summer!

Great to hear about the walking onions I'm going to plant some next fall/winter in my front food forest. Thought it would be a nice addition. Sunchokes are also on my list but I'm not sure when I will have a bed ready for them... Sweet potatoes would be great too! lol, they all sound good!

Nathanael Szobody wrote:Cassava is real easy, so are yams. I grow cassava in my garden.

Nice! I don't think cassava would grow in my area But who knows... with the right micro-climate... Thanks for sharing!

Tyler Ludens wrote:This year I'm trying two species of Yam and two varieties of Taro.  Not sure if I will be able to overwinter the tropical Yam.  So far the Taro are alive.  I've been covering them when it drops below freezing.  The Yams have not sprouted yet and probably won't until it gets quite warm for extended periods.  Of course they could just be rotting down there!

I've enjoyed learning about Yams and Taro from David the Good: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC208478ECji1rdkDDbB0vHQ

Awesome, thanks for sharing! I'm really curious to hear how that turns out for you. Always great to try new plants and see what works Good luck!

The arrowroot sounds really interesting. We have a wet swampy area I’d love to fill, but can it possibly compete with the Canada Thistle infesting the area at present now? The CT constantly blows in from USFS land (badly managed, free-grazed by cattle that eat everything else but CT). I mow it when it starts to bud, but it’s a never ending thing. I’d love to see almost anything else growing there. And I’m thinking about getting a few ducks... but I could wait, or fence them out for a few years.

I took walking onion tops from my garden patch (nursery stock) and tucked them into wood chip mulch in my food forest in the middle of a hot dry summer (for us).  Surprisingly a couple of them lived!  

I have a purple fingerling potato that we've planted in the garden that is basically perennial.  In each of the last two years we dug them all up.  The following spring the bed was full of volunteer potatoes.  This spring I should have three rows of fingerlings (two volunteer and one I'll plant).  Assuming the volunteers come up again this year, I'm done saving and planting them.  I'll just let them grow from the little tubers I miss when digging them.  I'll stop this practice if I'm accidentally selecting for small taters by doing this method.

I'm also trying sunchokes this year.  I planted some two years ago but the deer destroyed them.  Now they're inside the fence so they'll have a chance.  They'll be as much for the tubers as they are for screening the road.

Cindy Skillman wrote:The arrowroot sounds really interesting. We have a wet swampy area I’d love to fill, but can it possibly compete with the Canada Thistle infesting the area at present now? The CT constantly blows in from USFS land (badly managed, free-grazed by cattle that eat everything else but CT). I mow it when it starts to bud, but it’s a never ending thing. I’d love to see almost anything else growing there. And I’m thinking about getting a few ducks... but I could wait, or fence them out for a few years.

Hmm... I'm not sure but I think arrowroot would do better in higher water levels than Canada Thistle. So if you could do something to hold more water in that area perhaps that would help push the thistle out and get the arrowroot established. Another option might be to pick one area that is not too big and remove the thistle from that area and then plant arrowroot in that area. I would just see how the arrowroot did and if the thistle came back.

My guess is that there will be a point where it is too wet for the thistle to win out over the arrowroot. Arrowroot often grows as an emergent plant in water 6 inches or so deep. Basically the same areas that you might find cattails.

Good luck!

I just finished reading/watching your blog post. Really, really great job and fascinating info. Thanks so much!

Cindy Skillman wrote:I just finished reading/watching your blog post. Really, really great job and fascinating info. Thanks so much!

Thank you! I really appreciate the comment! Glad to hear you enjoyed it!

OK Daron,

You got me again!  LOL.  I just ordered Sunchokes, Egyptian walking onions, and American Groundnuts and I will probably buy some Cannas also.  Oh and I already planted some Hostas today.  

My Comfrey is coming up nicely, I should have a bumper crop of both Bocking 4 and Bocking 14.  Yeee ha.  I am going to post about my experiences with ordering and planting and propagating the two strains from and info on the two sources after they have grown a bit more.  The Bocking 14 which I got from Marsh Creek Farms is doing nicely.  The crown cuttings are getting good sized in my garage/shop and just yesterday the frist 3 or so of the 50 root cuttings poked their little heads out from the mulch.  They said it would take 8 weeks and it has been about 6 weeks for the first hints of life.

Take care

Ralph Kettell wrote:OK Daron,

You got me again!  LOL.  I just ordered Sunchokes, Egyptian walking onions, and American Groundnuts and I will probably buy some Cannas also.  Oh and I already planted some Hostas today.  

My Comfrey is coming up nicely, I should have a bumper crop of both Bocking 4 and Bocking 14.  Yeee ha.  I am going to post about my experiences with ordering and planting and propagating the two strains from and info on the two sources after they have grown a bit more.  The Bocking 14 which I got from Marsh Creek Farms is doing nicely.  The crown cuttings are getting good sized in my garage/shop and just yesterday the frist 3 or so of the 50 root cuttings poked their little heads out from the mulch.  They said it would take 8 weeks and it has been about 6 weeks for the first hints of life.

Take care

lol, nice! Those should give you a great harvest once established! That's awesome that you are planting so many perennial vegetables. I look forward to reading about your experiences with comfrey!

Another great post Daron
Bought 15 oca seeds from cultivariables and almost gave up on them the germination was so reluctant but glad I didn’t give up on them and about half are now teeny tiny seedlings looking viable and healthy. What a relief! Such a worthwhile project as I can’t seem to source oca tubers here in Canada. Got some beauties from the uk a few years back but they didn’t survive the winter months and the ones languishing in the fridge became mouldy and died. So sad and now I am playing the long game. Sunchokes, especially the red skinned ones were so delicious that I expanded my plantings and have high hopes. All this talk of flatuence and no one in my family succumbed after devouring them. A really beautiful crop to make space for.

Cameron Whyte wrote:Another great post Daron
Bought 15 oca seeds from cultivariables and almost gave up on them the germination was so reluctant but glad I found them and about half are teeny tiny seedlings looking viable and healthy. What a relief! Such a worthwhile project as I can’t seem to source oca tubers here in Canada. Got some beauties from the uk a few years back but they didn’t survive the winter months and the ones languishing on the fridge became mouldy and died. So sad and now I am playing the long game. Sunchokes, especially the red skinned ones were so delicious that I expanded my plantings and have high hopes. All this talk of flatuence and no one in my family succumbed after devouring them. A really beautiful crop to make space for.

Thank you and thanks for sharing! Cultivariables is not too far away from me and I'm excited to try some of the tubers they sell. Though it looks like they only have seeds available this year while they make some changes to their nursery.

Good luck with your project! Please share how it goes with all of us I would love to see pictures and hear how it goes for you.

Potatoes are a perennial vegetable here, producing 2 crops a year.  They grow from March through June, then going dormant until September, then growing until first frost in November.  Any tubers I miss or leave in the ground go on to grow in the next appropriate growing season.

Tumeric
Ginger (s)
Galangal - i think it is called "lesser galangal" and the "greater galangal" is a much bigger plant. Spicy scented leaves that the goats like too, and you have to use the roots fresh as they harden very quickly.

Taro - definitely, we have babies planted out from 1 original mama plant, and as easy to propagate as potato (cut off an eye while cooking a yum one, eat the rest and shove the eye into the mulch)
Queensland arrowroot - i don't know how similar this is to the previously mentioned arrowroot, and I don't have it in my own garden yet but friends do, and it is definitely perennial.

Sweet Potato! Our mound of it is from house slab prep, so its pretty big, aprox 20m long 3m wide 1+m high, and nearly 2 years old. Mostly a dense white skinned purple inside type that makes yumazing choco cake. And other stuff grows in there too, basically a food forest in the early stages. Um we actually use a mini loader to harvest them now with the digger bucket, 2 broken garden forks later was the lesson - use the machine!

Day lilies, and dahlias? Perennial, edible flowers, but the tubers of both are edible (my plants of both have LOVELY flowers at the moment but are tooooo young for me to dig any up and eat! Ask me in 2025...)
I have just bought 2 new root vegie plants a week ago from All Rare Herbs dot com, a peruvian parsnip (not maca) and Chinese keys (Boesenbergia rotunda). I have chinese scallions in a bed, also from them.

Chayote, choko. Mainly tasteless when mature, great for bulking any jam or used as a pie filling. Baby ones look cute in my vegie curry. Being a curcubit family, edible growing tips which are tasty. The seeds are my favourite bit sadly there isn't much in 1 choko. I have seen some plants many years old, they grow a large stem, thigh wide, if they have something to climb. My partner says this is not a root veg, as it is not the root you eat, but I think it is a grey area! It is not a fruit tree, and no other squash grow like this, do they?

Anyone here growing Ullucus tuberosus? Marketed as Earth Gems in NZ, absolutely gorgeous root veg, quite small, but almost neon colours and sometimes spotty, pink, yellow, orange. Sort of like a yam so if it doesn't get too cold, or too hot, should pop up again in the same spot. Easy to grow, hard to find! Leaves edible too now that I remember my last patch, the thick leaves had coloured stems presumably related to the colour of the root.

Great post, as always!

For those in no-frost zones yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius) is a great perennial root veggie. In my zone 6 I have to overwinter it in a cellar, but still worth it.

Ramsons (Allium ursinum) bulbs are great as well, initially I was collecting only leaves but they become abundant enough to use their bulbs as well.

Garlic is the first one that sprang to my mind: Harvest and sort in October, replant in late October or November and you can keep it going year after year.

Steve Thorn wrote:I've had really good success with Egyptian walking onions. It grows so well, it was almost hard to kill!
I'm really excited to plant some sunchokes too this year, and I'm also going to plant some sweet potatoes and horderadish.
I'm getting hungry thinking about a good sweet potato with cinnamon sugar and butter, and horderadish cocktail sauce with some shrimp this summer!

I have to get myself some walking onions: Onions here are getting more expensive.
You might want to go easy on the sunchokes. In one season, they can travel about 5 ft in every direction! They can grow deep in my sandbox, like almost 2 ft so unless your planter is lined with 12 mil plastic, you may be invaded. I've had a tiny root, like less than an inch sprout more the following year. They are delicious! The white ones especially are larger and not as twisted, so easier to clean. The pink ones are smaller and give me gas something awful. but I eat them like radishes. Maybe cooked? Boiled with a side of avocado mayo. Yum! They will make a decent hedge too, and the flowers are relished by my bees. {It is in the sunflower family, after all}.
There are a couple of different sweet potatoes. The orange thingy we have at Thanksgiving is ... OK. Not my fave. What I really love is the Asian Sweet potato. It almost qualifies as a perennial, because, like garlic, it has a long storage time, almost a year once it is cured and stored properly. Here it is too cold to overwinter in the ground. The flowers are beautiful if you plant them in a barrel. The Asian sweet potato has red skin and a white interior. It boils quickly and has no fibers. The taste is out of this world good! it tastes like chestnuts, the good chestnuts from trees that used to grow in this country. I serve it like regular sweet potatoes but I don't need the sugar. I also use it in the stuffing for the turkey or the goose at Thanksgiving.

Mike Turner wrote:Potatoes are a perennial vegetable here, producing 2 crops a year.  They grow from March through June, then going dormant until September, then growing until first frost in November.  Any tubers I miss or leave in the ground go on to grow in the next appropriate growing season.

That's great--I actually have volunteers coming back up in my area to. I debated making the case for them to be considered a perennial root vegetable and just decided to leave them out. But you make a good point about growing them in warmer areas. Do you move yours around? Just wondering if you ever have pest issues with them growing in the same spot for a longer time period. I hear conflicting views on that being an issue. Thanks for sharing!

Elanor Pog wrote:Tumeric
Ginger (s)
Galangal - i think it is called "lesser galangal" and the "greater galangal" is a much bigger plant. Spicy scented leaves that the goats like too, and you have to use the roots fresh as they harden very quickly.

Taro - definitely, we have babies planted out from 1 original mama plant, and as easy to propagate as potato (cut off an eye while cooking a yum one, eat the rest and shove the eye into the mulch)
Queensland arrowroot - i don't know how similar this is to the previously mentioned arrowroot, and I don't have it in my own garden yet but friends do, and it is definitely perennial.

Sweet Potato! Our mound of it is from house slab prep, so its pretty big, aprox 20m long 3m wide 1+m high, and nearly 2 years old. Mostly a dense white skinned purple inside type that makes yumazing choco cake. And other stuff grows in there too, basically a food forest in the early stages. Um we actually use a mini loader to harvest them now with the digger bucket, 2 broken garden forks later was the lesson - use the machine!

Day lilies, and dahlias? Perennial, edible flowers, but the tubers of both are edible (my plants of both have LOVELY flowers at the moment but are tooooo young for me to dig any up and eat! Ask me in 2025...)
I have just bought 2 new root vegie plants a week ago from All Rare Herbs dot com, a peruvian parsnip (not maca) and Chinese keys (Boesenbergia rotunda). I have chinese scallions in a bed, also from them.

Chayote, choko. Mainly tasteless when mature, great for bulking any jam or used as a pie filling. Baby ones look cute in my vegie curry. Being a curcubit family, edible growing tips which are tasty. The seeds are my favourite bit sadly there isn't much in 1 choko. I have seen some plants many years old, they grow a large stem, thigh wide, if they have something to climb. My partner says this is not a root veg, as it is not the root you eat, but I think it is a grey area! It is not a fruit tree, and no other squash grow like this, do they?

Great list! Thanks for sharing--I think the only one that will grow in my area is sweet potato but who knows... I like pushing what is possible with plants

What is and what is not a root vegetable is a bit of a gray area. I tend to think of it more in terms of a food forest layers. The root layer to me includes anything you harvest from below the ground even if it is technically not a root--like onions. But from a botanist perspective that would not be correct. But it works for my planning Thanks for sharing!

Elanor – I’m not familiar with that vegetable but it looks interesting and it looks like it will grow in my area. For those interested here is a link with more information: https://www.cultivariable.com/instructions/andean-roots-tubers/how-to-grow-ulluco/

Richard – Thank you! 😊 Yacon is one I’m thinking about trying and there are so many alliums to try! Thanks for sharing!

Cécile – That is true you could count garlic since I was counting vegetables that you dig up, harvest some and replant the rest as perennial for this post. Though I was making a distinction about whether you can just replant immediately, or you need to store them over winter. To me the first is perennial and the latter is an annual. Though it is a grey area. Thanks for sharing! And good points about sunchokes—got to put them in a spot you don’t mind them spreading.

My andeans tubers all died. My place is not hot but still not cold enough! Over 30ºc they suffer...
I had ulluco and oca and another one....

Chayota is great and fantastic to make orange marmelade.
I have air potato, it also has an edible root.
Galangal yes, super good grated to make an egg tortilla!

I am sceptical with the word "perennial" because we eat the root...
- If you want sweet potatoes, you have to collect all and replant the stem.
- If you plant yacon, you have to replant a bit of the top and start the whole plant again.

Jerusalem artichoke is perennial even if you try to harvest all, it regrows! Same or almost, with comfrey. Just leave a piece...

I also agree about elephant garlic, because when you pull the big one, you will leave the little bulbils in, so no work = yes that is perennial!

I am growing this season:

1. Arrowhead—Sagittaria latifolia
2. Egyptian Walking Onion—Allium x proliferum
3. Skirret—Sium sisarum
4. Sunchokes—Helianthus tuberosus
5. American Groundnut—Apios americana
6. Hog Peanut
7. Chinese Artichoke—Stachys affinis
8. Common Camas—Camassia quamash
9. Yacon
10. Garlic
11. Chinese Yam/Cinnamon Yam

It's a big list, but I wanted to focus on high-calorie perennial tubers, so these made the cut (other than the garlic, which is more for staying healthy, not high-calorie). I wish I could grow some of those gorgeous Andean tubers like Oca and I'm still going to dip my toe in that by growing Yacon...but I'm not overly optimistic about Yacon since it's a more mild climate plant.

Oh and since others have mentioned sweet potatoes, I'm going to try them this year too (using organic store-bought tubers and sprouting them). Does anyone in Canada have good experiences with growing Sweet potatoes? What have been your failures, lesssons?

Don't worry, I don't have any illusions about making them perennial in Canada, haha! But I love the taste and would like to grow them annually as a high-calorie crop for my family.

Daron Williams wrote:

Mike Turner wrote:Potatoes are a perennial vegetable here, producing 2 crops a year.  They grow from March through June, then going dormant until September, then growing until first frost in November.  Any tubers I miss or leave in the ground go on to grow in the next appropriate growing season.

That's great--I actually have volunteers coming back up in my area to. I debated making the case for them to be considered a perennial root vegetable and just decided to leave them out. But you make a good point about growing them in warmer areas. Do you move yours around? Just wondering if you ever have pest issues with them growing in the same spot for a longer time period. I hear conflicting views on that being an issue. Thanks for sharing!

No pest or late blight problems. My chickens take care of the potato beetles and my climate is too hot and dry for leaf blights.  I'll move them every couple of years.  The main problem with perennializing them is they tend to set the tubers higher in the soil with each season, so I have to mound them up a bit to keep all of the tubers underground.  Also you have to identify the bad tasting "glassy" potatoes that sprouted and gave their all to produce the new crop, but they are usually easy to distinguish by their aged skins.  Also potatoes left in the ground a few months before harvesting may have a few wireworm tunnels through them.  Purple potatoes don't have the green skin when exposed to light problem that you have with red or brown skinned potatoes.

Mike, here we can have 3 rounds of potatoes per year!

About purple potatoes that don't have the green skin when exposed to light... are you sure, or is it just that the color is hidden by the violet flesh? Or do you really think that the antioxydant makes it impossible to put saponin there?

Is it overall containing less saponins? (which in that case makes it interesting for people who prefer to stay away from solanacea...)

It doesn't have that bitter flavor normally associated with the green skin .  Perhaps the purple pigment in the flesh absorbs enough light to keep the green reaction from occurring.

Xisca – Sorry to hear about your Andean tubers. Yeah, I struggled with that definition but I ended up deciding that if I could just leave a piece of them behind and they would grow then they counted. At least some of the Andean tubers can be planted this way (Oca is grown that way in England). But it is a bit of a grey area. All the ones on the list should be able to be planted right away as you harvest just by leaving some behind as long as your climate is not too cold in the winter.

Rosemary – that is great! Thanks for sharing! If you want to share any info about how you cook with them I’m sure a lot of us would be very interested 😊

Sweet potatoes will be new to me. I have not grown them yet and I still need to get an area prepared for them. Perhaps next year.

Mike – Great to hear thanks for the update! Interesting about the purple skinned potato. That is very interesting.


Thanks all for the great comments—I’m enjoying the conversation. Please share any harvest pics and cooking info as the year goes 😊

Rosemary – that is great! Thanks for sharing! If you want to share any info about how you cook with them I’m sure a lot of us would be very interested 😊

Sweet potatoes will be new to me. I have not grown them yet and I still need to get an area prepared for them. Perhaps next year.

Thanks for the reply, Daron! I have to say, you always have very nice, kind things to say to people who reply to your threads. And you clearly take the extra time to read everyone's thoughts in detail. So thanks for that :-)

I would love to share some recipes, once we get our roots producing! Thanks for the idea! Cheers

For those who can propagate sweet potatoes from stems:
- make a loop and cross the stem like an alpha letter.
They will grow more tubers and make more roots quicker.
Burry the "lasso" horizontally with some leaves outside.
Roots appear at each place where you cut leaves  on the burried stem.

Rosemary Hansen wrote:

Rosemary – that is great! Thanks for sharing! If you want to share any info about how you cook with them I’m sure a lot of us would be very interested 😊

Sweet potatoes will be new to me. I have not grown them yet and I still need to get an area prepared for them. Perhaps next year.

Thanks for the reply, Daron! I have to say, you always have very nice, kind things to say to people who reply to your threads. And you clearly take the extra time to read everyone's thoughts in detail. So thanks for that

I would love to share some recipes, once we get our roots producing! Thanks for the idea! Cheers

Thank you! I try but it is easy to fall behind and older threads are not getting as much attention from me as new ones come out. But I still try to check back from time to time I look forward to the recipes!

Xisca Nicolas wrote:For those who can propagate sweet potatoes from stems:
- make a loop and cross the stem like an alpha letter.
They will grow more tubers and make more roots quicker.
Burry the "lasso" horizontally with some leaves outside.
Roots appear at each place where you cut leaves  on the burried stem.

Nice! Thanks for the tip! Sweet potatoes are on my list to try maybe next year. I will have to try out your tip!

They will grow more tubers and make more roots quicker.
Burry the "lasso" horizontally with some leaves outside.  

Definitely will try this. Never heard of it before. Have several sweet potato vines growing now to experiment with. Plus a couple hundred slips of four varieties arriving soon. Expecting to plant a few regular potatoes but tubers are mostly about sweet potatoes this year. Peanuts are already established & will be expanded into new areas. Some walking onions too. Wild ginseng!!!

Attempting to get a patch of self seeding carrots thriving but that's optimistic. Horseradish, sunchokes, & yams are future projects.

Have a few extra mouths to feed now. Not getting any younger either. I see perennials in general as a very good plan for the future.

 

I'm located in canada, zone 4 and I've grown skirret for about three years now, it grows nice and healthy and it spreads easily but the roots are too skinny to bother cooking with.  Last year i pulled it all out to plant something more productive.

I have sunchokes and they make great privacy between my garden and the road.  But we only eat a few.  

Thanks for the tip about the sweet potato stem.  I've  grown slips from organic sweet potatoes but i always find i run out of hot weather before they have a chance to mature.  I usually get about three small tubers per plant.  This year I'll plant them in my new high tunnel and hope the longer season helps.

Ann Maud wrote: I've grown skirret for about three years now, it grows nice and healthy and it spreads easily but the roots are too skinny to bother cooking with.  Last year i pulled it all out to plant something more productive.

Skirret might be something that would fit better in a food forest than in a production garden.  It could just be there growing along and you could use it or not as you feel.  Personally I think a large variety of different crops is beneficial, even if they are all not as productive as we might want.  I don't use all the onion things that grow well here, but I like having them out there in case we want them.

Ann- Yeah, I was unsure about skirret but some people seem to like it. One thing I saw when reading about it was that it seems to like a fair bit of soil moisture. I'm thinking about trying to grow it near a pond where the soil would stay nice and moist but not saturated. I wonder if that would result in bigger roots...

Thanks for sharing!