As you can see from the photo above, the bowl isn't particularly big - maybe 25cm high and 40cm across - but water chestnuts are supposed to multiply profusely under ideal conditions (one corm can produce up to 100 new corms in a season!), so I figured I might get a decent crop.
To harvest them, you wait until the stems have all died back in the cold weather, generally about this time of year or early July. They were all looking pretty dead to me, and have been for a few weeks now, so I tipped out the pot today to see what I was waiting for me.
After scrounging around in the mud for 10 minutes or so, I only came up with this lot! After cleaning and weighing, they total about 280 grams. Pfffft! The plant cost me around $13, so that works out at about $36 a kilo, LOL.
We'll eat them peeled and sliced in stir frys with other vegetables, so it probably works out as 2 meals worth I guess, once I pick out the smallest ones and save them for planting out again next season.
As I said, the pot was pretty small; most people I have seen growing water chestnuts have had them in old bathtubs, and I can see why now, LOL, obviously you need a fair bit more room for them (and/ or perhaps a deeper pot?). I have a heap of foam boxes in the garage that I have been reluctant to use for planting vegetables in (after reading about toxic chemicals in styrofoam leaching out when exposed to heat, i.e. the sun) but nevertheless, I am considering planting up several of them next spring (say, four or five, if I can find the room - and my corms don't all rot during storage), and give over the glazed pot to growing cress?
Anyone else have experience with water chestnuts? It occurs to me just now, that maybe they need to be more heavily fertilised than I fertilised them, too? Anyway, I hope they taste nice, LOL.
More information about growing Chinese Water Chestnuts is available here and here.
8 comments:
Ohhhh go hassle NatureWitch! She is the Queen of growing water chestnuts and sighed very deep sighs when she found out that the cherished corms she had shared with me had carked it!
You should really be saving the large ones to replant - you know the one about saving your best to carry on the species!!
Oh excellent, thanks Lara! Will do :-)
Hi Robbie,
Yes that was my first thought too, but a) if I save the few big ones I won't really get anything much to eat, LOL and b) I read that commercial planters save the smaller ones to replant, because size has no bearing on productivity as they are genetically identical to the bigger ones (they all came from the same plant)?
Cheers, Julie
Hi Julie
I grow mine in cheap plastic buckets and find one corm will produce 25 to 50 in a season - probably because Canberra is not the ideal environment for them (a bit chilly).
The soil mix you grow them in needs to be very rich. I use a 50/50 mix of garden soil and cow manure. Keep the mix moist while the corms are first shooting, then add more water as the shoots grow. Keep them in a nice sunny spot and keep the water level up to about half the height of the shoots.
By the way, I've found yellow and green buckets work better than red or blue or purple. Not sure why, but I guess the colour must affect them.
Keep your best corms for the next season's planting. That's about it, really.
love and light
Excellent, thanks Naturewitch :-) How do you store your corms over winter? I read to put them in a plastic bag in the crisper of the fridge?
Cheers, Julie
Julie,
I live in New England, USA and have been able to get my corms for pennies and pound in the local Chinatown supermarket. Makes it much more economical. Growing mine in buckets. Love the flavor.
PKile
Bluegrass Sustainable Agriculture Project
Hi PKile,
Thanks for the tip!
Cheers,
Julie
Hi Julie,
I would like to plant water chestnuts in bucket, but i am concern about mosquito breeding within the bucket.
i understand keeping fishes in the water may prevent mosquito, but the water level above soil is only ~ 1.5in. I don't think the fish will survive in such low level of water.
Is there alternatives?
thanks
Greeny
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