When did you plant yours? Are you growing a few plants, or a whole bunch?
I think it's ok to leave them in the ground all year, but with cold snaps in mid April, the foliage keeps dying back if it emerges earlier. I dug up any plants that had grown at least 2 ft. high to harvest the tubers and divide the propagules, so anything left in the ground was quite small. Also, for anyone in a climate colder than northern Calif., they should not be left in the ground if there's any chance the ground will freeze, and they seem to need a 6-8 month frost-free growing season.
The limiting factor seems to be water and good rich soil. For the 5 or so years I've been growing them, the plants that get regular water and are in soil with lots of compost have done best. I water by hand, so "regular water" is every 2-5 days (more frequent in warmer weather), and I give them a lot more water than any of the other plants. I add compost to most of my garden beds a few times a year, and the yacon plants that did best were the ones that got the most compost.
This year my biggest plant happened to be in the middle of my tomato bed, so I probably sacrificed some KB tomatoes, but on the other hand, that area got a lot more water than usual, so I probably got more Fox cherry and Dagma's Perfection tomatoes than I would have. I still have a big green Caspian Pink hanging on under the shelter of the huge yacon leaves, too.
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