Oca: Piling up the pods

I have a confession to make.  I no longer rush out every morning to scan the oca (Oxalis tuberosa) patch for pods.  In fact, I often let a week go by without looking at them.  What a difference a couple of months makes!  Back in July, I was checking them twice a day, pollinating by hand, bagging pods, fretting about losing them to wind and rain.

That level of effort started to wane after a couple of thousand seeds.  Now, I do most of my crosses indoors with cuttings and tend to ignore all of the open pollinated pods in the oca patch.  Occasionally, I go collect the pods that are pointing skyward and leave them in a plastic tub to dry and disgorge their contents.

I did that this afternoon:

That is probably between 100-200 oca pods which, by the averages, will yield abut 1000 seeds.  This is really the low effort way to oca seeds.  I really want known crosses as much as possible for my projects, so these will be destined for other oca growers.

Oca seeds and tubers are sometimes available in our seed shop.