Oca, Blood Red

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Oca information and growing instructions

Blood Red is a variety of unknown origin, notable for reasonably heat stable color.

Culinary Traits

Blood Red has yellow and red flesh that is dry and fairly firm.  The flavor is moderately tart but not sweet.  Like most varieties, it loses color with cooking, but the skin remains pink and the flesh is yellow.

Agronomic Traits

Blood Red plants are moderate in height and fairly compact.  The tubers are formed on short stolons, which makes them easy to harvest, but can result in crowding, which causes some of the tubers to be irregularly shaped.  Tuberization photoperiod is about 12 hours, the same as most heirloom varieties.  Average yield is 1.2 pounds.  The maximum tuber length is 4.1 inches and the average tuber length is 1.6 inches, so this variety skews toward smaller tuber sizes.  Average tuber count is 31.  This variety commonly produces somatic mutants with yellow tubers.  Overall, this isn’t a great producer, but it has remained popular because of its deep red skin.

Blood Red is a very poor flowerer with a mid-styled flower morph.

This variety is a bit of a mystery – I’m not sure where it came from.  It appeared among tubers of another variety several years ago.  It may have been another variety mixed in when we added new material to the collection or may have arisen as a mutant or (much less likely) a volunteer seedling.  We treat it as an unidentified heirloom variety, since that is the most probable origin.

What you will receive

Tubers

You will receive the stated number of tubers, packaged in a wax envelope. We grade tubers by passing them through a grate. Small tubers are those that won’t fall through a 1/3″ grate, but that will fall through a 1 inch grate. Medium/large tubers are those that will not fall through a 1 inch grate.

Seeds

Seeds are open pollinated. Because oca is a polyploid hybrid, the seeds will not grow true to type. They are suitable for use in breeding or conservation efforts and could be used to select varieties similar to the parent type.