PlantSowGrow
How to grow Yacon
Smallanthus sonchifolius
🥕 Vegetable
🌱 Grown each year
A tall, sunflower-like Andean plant with huge, sweet, crunchy roots — like a cross between apple and water chestnut. Eat raw or roasted.
At a glance: Sow late April to late May, harvest from mid October.
When to sow, plant and harvest
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Sow outdoors
Harvest
Timed for a typical UK garden (last frost mid-April). The app uses your own town's frost dates.
Growing Yacon: what it needs
- Light
- Full sun · 6+ hours a day
- Watering
- Water in dry spells, especially as crops swell
- Soil
- Rich, moist, well-drained soil
- Spacing
- 75 cm
- In pots
- Only in large containers
- Feeding
- A general fertiliser before planting
- Harvest
- About 170 days from sowing
- Hardiness
- USDA zones 3–9
Step by step
- Late April – late May · 2 weeks after the last spring frost
Plant Plants
Plant plants 75 cm apart in rows.
- 7–21 days after “Plant Plants” · Early May – mid May
Look for Shoots
Green shoots should be showing. Keep weeds down — these crops hate competition.
- 170–200 days after “Plant Plants” · Mid October – mid November
Harvest
Lift carefully after the first frost blackens the leaves — the roots snap. Keep the knobbly crown at the top for next year.
- 7–21 days after “Harvest” · Late October – early November
Dry and Store
Leave roots in the sun for a week to sweeten. Store the crowns in barely damp compost somewhere frost-free and replant in spring.
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