{"id":35297,"date":"2016-04-19T21:31:42","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T03:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/?p=35297"},"modified":"2016-04-19T21:31:42","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T03:31:42","slug":"growing-jicama-from-seed-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/growing-jicama-from-seed-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Jicama from Seed – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jicama<\/a>My husband asked me to grow<\/strong> jicama this year. Something about it being crunchy and low calorie. My chef-daughter assures me that it is delicious in salads. Everyone I mention it to has had some and likes it, but I have never eaten it that I know of. However, I’m always up for trying to grow something new, so I ordered some seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Research revealed that it is also called Asian Bean Jicama or Yam Bean. It is a long vine that can grow to 20 feet, each vine producing approximately 4-5 edible tubers, but they will likely be on the small side in my limited 4 -5 months of warm growing time. This website provided the best information on growing jicama<\/a><\/span>. I will list some highlights:<\/p>\n

1. The pods and seeds are poisonous
\n2. Pruning the vines to 3-5 feet and removal of flowers is recommended for more generous harvest.
\n3. Plants are sensitive to frost.
\n4. Can be propagated by tuber or seed.<\/p>\n

I started my jicama seeds using my usual seed starting guidelines<\/a><\/span>. Even though the website\u00a0recommended soaking the seeds first, I skipped this step since I keep the soil very moist for a couple days after planting. There were not any specific planting instructions on the seed packet, so I went with the standard of a depth twice the diameter of the seed<\/a><\/span>. This is about half as deep as the above website recommends.<\/p>\n

Because jicama require such a long season and I didn’t know how quickly they would germinate, I began my seed in the middle of February. They sprouted robustly within a few days and almost every seed sprouted. (click on any photo to enlarge)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
My jicama seed, started in February, is just peeking out of the soil a few days after planting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Looking<\/a>
Looking down on the new sprouts the same day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Within another few days, the broad, spade shaped leaves were multiplying and soaking up the greenhouse lightwaves. The plants immediately starting vine-like growth, but not to the point that they were attaching to neighboring plants.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The jicama were happy, easy to care for sprouts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Soon it was time to thin the seedlings to one per pot. I tested gently pulling the “lesser” seedling from each pot, something that is not necessarily recommended since it can disturb the roots of the remaining plant. However, I had spaced the planting of the seeds such that, at this stage of growth, the roots did not appear to be intermingled yet. I expect some of the roots of the pulled plant were lost, but they still looked to be in such good shape that I prepared some other pots right away and transplanted them!<\/p>\n

\"These<\/a>
These are the jicama sprouts that were being thinned out. You can see that some look stronger than others.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"These<\/a>
These are the same jicama plants from the previous photo, newly repotted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Now the obvious issue was that they were going to get too big for the greenhouse quickly. I had an unusually tall raised bed that I thought would have two things in its favor. It would heat more quickly than other soil and it would make covering them easier in case of near-frost night time lows. After a couple more weeks of letting them grow undisturbed, then hardening them off<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0I transplanted them into the raised bed. The weather was getting up into the 70’s regularly, and even low 80’s some (\u00b0F), so it seemed like a reasonable experiment.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The jicama is still in pots, just prior to being planted outside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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According to the same website above, the plants can be grown 12 inches apart. Since I was not dealing with standard rows, I positioned them all about that far apart in the raised bed and fit the 9 best looking vines in there. Then I stuck a couple of the more dubious ones off to the side, but still decently spaced.<\/p>\n

For trellises, I put 4 tomato cages in the raised bed. I did end up removing the cages for a couple of nights, to make it easier to cover the raised bed with a blanket when the night time temperatures were going to be in the mid 30’s (\u00b0F).<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>
This is a unique open bottomed metal square that my husband found for me at a scrap metal yard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The jicama plants have been staying healthy outside so far, although will probably pick up the growth rate when significantly warmer weather comes next month. But what I can say for sure is that growing them from seed is uncomplicated. The rest of the story will have to wait for part 2.<\/p>\n

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My husband asked me to grow jicama this year. Something about it being crunchy and low calorie. My chef-daughter assures me that it is delicious in salads. Everyone I mention it to has had some and likes it, but I have never eaten it that I know of. However, I’m always up for trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,107,104],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}