Plant · P-260

Yacon

Smallanthus sonchifolius

Yacon produces a sweet, crisp tuber that is eaten raw like a fruit rather than cooked like a potato - though it needs a week curing in the sun after harvest to convert its starch to sugar, a step people often skip and then wonder why it tasted bland. Unlike most root crops, the part you eat and the part you replant are different organs: harvest every tuber and the woody crown left behind still regrows next year, so nothing is left in the ground to sprout as a volunteer. It also produces enough carbohydrate as a low-glycemic natural sugar to work as a homestead sweetener, though boiling the juice down to syrup takes real fuel. The tubers keep only a few days once dug, so this is a crop to eat fresh or preserve right away, not one to store in a root cellar.