Vegetable · Asteraceae
When to plant yacon
Sweet, crisp tubers eaten raw like a fruit, on a plant that needs a long frost-free season and then must be lifted before winter.
Plant out
1 week after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
150-210
From sowing to a first picking.
Hardy in USDA zones
8a to 11a
Winter cold sets the limit here, not the calendar.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make yacon plantable anywhere.
- Plant out 1 week after the last frost.
- Expect 150–210 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Hardy in USDA zones 8a–11a.
Getting the timing right
Plant rhizomes after the last frost. Lift when the first frost blackens the tops, and store the crowns frost-free for replanting.
Frost tolerance
Top growth is killed at 0C. The tubers survive a light frost in the ground but not a freeze, so they are lifted promptly.
Classified as tender, with damage expected below 0°C (32°F)32°F (0°C).