Open Modal

Sunchokes. A gardening mistake

I can’t remember who gave me a couple of shriveled up sunchokes, aka Jerusalem artichokes, a few years ago. I thought they were too dried up to be viable, but I tossed them into one of garden beds in an old pinball machine cabinet anyway. The first year, a few grew. I dug up a few of the tubers and ate them and understood clearly why they have the nickname “fartichoke.” I ignored the plants until this year when I was cleaning up the garden bed. Holy moly. I would guess there more than 50 pounds in that garden bed.

I hope I got them all, because I bet this plant will re-grow from the smallest chunk of a tuber left in the soil. I will be diligent in removing plants that pop up. I never want to see these again. Here’s what they looked like just after the first hard frost, which is the traditional harvest time for the tubers.

See the tiny flowers at the tips? They look like little sunflowers on an awkwardly large stalk.

I did you all a favor and threw away the two big buckets of tubers.

~Debbie

P.S. Here are some sunchoke recipes if you are interested and have a tougher digestive system than me.

Roasted sunchokes

Creamy ginger scalloped sunchokes

Pan-fried sunchokes

Brussels sprouts and sunchoke salad

Recommended Posts

Loading...