Happy Easter and jicama
“Here comes Peter Cottontail, Hoppin’ down the bunny trail, Hippity hoppin’, Easter ” is here, a Christian festival, our one holiday without a definite calendar date. Easter can never occur before March 22 or after April 25. It all has to do with the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox, not just our astronomical full moon, but our ecclesiastical full moon. A March Easter is considered early, although we had one in 2013 and now in 2016, we won’t have another until 2024 and 2027. It was founded in the Julian, then Gregorian calendars. The 20th was the Vernal Equinox and the astronomical full moon was at 8:01 a.m., the 23rd.
When I worked, it was considered a theological/ecclesiastical holiday – ergo, no paid holiday. Have a blessed day.
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Last Saturday was the Trafalgar Taste of the Garden. I tasted a great slaw salad of jicama and beets in julienned strips. It reminded me of when I first tasted jicama over 20 years ago. My friends that volunteered at ECHO told me about it and fed it to me as a raw sliced vegetable appetizer for dipping. It tastes like a crunchy, nutty apple/water chestnut.
Pronounced hic-ah-mah, it hails from Mexico and South America. Pachyrhizus erosus is a vine that has a Mexican yam bean or turnip at its root, a tuber potato, and is a member of the bean family (Fabaceae). Jicama is frost sensitive and needs nine months without frost to produce edible tubers; 5 months produces smaller tubers. Do not refrigerate the tuber. Their vines can reach 15 to 20 feet long, growing along the ground – stake the vines or use a trellis, just don’t overwater. Root vegetables rot in too much water. Jicama produces a natural insecticide in the above-ground vines, meaning they can protect themselves from harmful pests.
Now is the time to plant them, although they can be planted year round, preferring full sun and moderate rainfall. Sub-tropical areas can sow seeds anytime of the year. It takes a long time to grow them, 150 days.
To eat, you peel off the inedible thick, light brown or gray papery outer layer and slice into chips. Do not use a vegetable peeler; a sharp chef’s knife is best. Cut off ends and set it on the broadest end. Work from top to the bottom, following the curve of the tuber, slide the knife under the skin to peel it. You now have a white fleshed tuber. There is no need for lemon juice or acidulated water. They stay crisp and white no matter how you slice it, even using only half of it. A natural on veggie platters because they don’t turn color. Raw chips as a snack can be sprinkled with lime juice and a little chili powder. Store what is left in 53 to 60 degree temperature, then cut away the dried part when reusing it.
Another chip use is to lay them in a single layer on parchment paper, brush both sides with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 200 degrees F, turning every 20 minutes for 90 to 100 minutes. Not a quick process but worth it. Baked, salted jicama chips are addictive. Eight-six percent to 90 percent water, it stays fresh and crisp if cooked briefly, never discoloring. When cooked, it tends to take on the flavor of whatever it is combined with. They were used as staples on board ships because they stored well, could be eaten raw and were thirst quenching.
Flowers are blue or white, making pods similar to lima beans, on fully developed plants. Deadhead the blooms and keep the plant pruned to 3-5 feet for better root production. The two cultivated forms of P. erosus are jicama de agua and jicama de leche; both named for their moisture consistency. Leche has a long root and milky juice while the agua form looks like a top, more watery clear juice (it is the preferred form for market.)
Low in saturated fat, with trace amounts of protein, it is a good source of potassium and vitamin C. They need to be harvested when they reach the size of two fists, any larger they become tough, fiberous and sweet. Beware only the tuber is edible. All the rest of the plant is very poisonous. The seeds contain the toxin rotenone, a poison used as an insecticide and pesticide.
Jicama has no direct connection with Easter, except that I encountered them a week apart, but you might want to add them to your vegetable platter for Easter dinner.
I bought a spaghetti squash months back, saving the seeds, I gave them to my wonderful vegetable growing son-in-law. He helps in the Trafalgar gardens. He reports that they are now sprouted to 5 inches and he is tearing out his collards for space. What is interesting about squash is their allelopathy. If you have heard of the “Three sisters planting,” first grow corn, when it gets a good start on growth, plant pole beans to grow up the stalk and fix the nitrogen, then plant squash, supposedly to shade and keep down the weeds. You all know that weeds should love to grow in squash, shade never kept them out, just made weeds grow taller, but the weeds don’t grow because of allelopathy. Allelopathy is ” the chemical warfare between plants.” It occurs when plants produce natural chemicals, known as allelochemicals that leach from leaf litter that has fallen to the ground or dead decaying plant. So when the rains come down and hit the leaves of the squash, it washes off these allelochemicals from the leaves that suppress the weeds and don’t affect the crop vegetables.
One of the first known examples was around black walnut trees. I had one in Indiana and couldn’t grow a garden underneath it, especially tomatoes.
Nevertheless, find a tree and hug it; thank it for all it does for us.
Joyce Comingore is a Master Gardener, hibiscus enthusiast and member of the Garden Club of Cape Coral.