I went to harvest some vegetables at my annual allotment today. Just as the light was fading, I visited a weedy corner where I knew some daylilies were still hanging out (after I'd moved most of the clump to the perennial plot).
If they had looked like this today I might have harvested some of their fat, crisp buds.
But they didn't. They looked like this:
But that was all right for what I had in mind. As a sudden downpour got underway I hurriedly dug a couple of clumps and did my best to wash a lot of claggy mud off their roots in the water butt (mostly to make them weigh less so that I could carry them home!)
I was after their tubers (the small stubby roots in the photo above).
There didn't seem to be many at first but there were actually quite a few hidden in that muddy mass. It took a while to extricate them.
Cleaning them up was a bit of a fiddle too.
For the sake of speed I roasted them along with some parsnips we were having for tea. They reminded me of the tasty but slightly overdone crispy chips you get at the bottom of the packet.
Was it worth the effort? To satisfy my curiosity, yes. As a food gathering mission, no. But I think choosing a day when both the weather and the soil were drier would have helped a lot. And then perhaps making Amy Feiereisel's delicious looking Spring Vegetable Soup with Daylily Tubers. Worth a delve for that I think!
N.B. I sell a range of perennial vegetable plants on my website. 
