Yomping yams

A crop for warmer climes generally speaking, yet there is one variety of yam – the cinnamon vine – that can be grown here in the UK to good effect, as Sally Cunningham explains

- Sally Cunningham

If you visit any African food store you’ll be confronted with a pile of fresh yams, and you may have seen them growing in the tropics, but few people know there is a hardy yam which can be grown here.

If you look at inner-city allotments from a summer train trip, you may be puzzled to see greenhouses with what looks like fleece wrapped chimneys poking from their roofs. These are usually on plots owned by Caribbean growers, who aim to get the best possible yields from their yams by protecting the leaves and prolonging the growing season to produce roots in the shortest time.

AIR POTATO

Cinnamon vine, or air potato, Dioscorea batatas, is late to start into growth, sometimes not emerging until late May in the open, so needs all the help it can get. It’s fairly hardy outside in sheltered sites south of Birmingham, but for ease of cropping and general management it’s probably easier to restrain it in a polytunnel or greenhouse.