Everyone loves potatoes, but did you know there's a vegetable that's even easier to grow, tastes delicious and needs almost no care. This is the Jerusalem artichoke or sun choke and it's an all around garden star as we're about to find out. Let me show you.
And here we are, my artichoke patch, now it doesn't look like much does it, but believe me under here are untold riches, planted last year and I've been saving them to this very moment to dig them up. Shall we? There are many reasons to grow Jerusalem artichokes and this right here is one of them, Jerusalem artichokes are one of the most prolific vegetables you can grow and they're one of the easiest, because unlike say potatoes, the tubers can stay in here all winter, to lift up as they are needed, at your convenience, no special storage required.
This is one of the joys of this hardy plant, not only it's super hardy, good in zone 3 all the way up to zone 9, it's pretty much bomb proof, suffering very few diseases like blight and hardly any pest attacks from the likes of say potato beetle. Plant it towards the end of winter and watch it romp away. Now they'll put on lots of growth over the summer and then it'll all die back and the terrifically tempting tubers will just sit here ready for you whenever you are.
Now if your ground freezes solid over winter, just dig them up before then and then you can always store them in boxes of damp sand or potting mix. [Music] There we go, let's give them a weigh. Now I've already had to decant one bucket load into this.
This is all from one bed, and I've got 22. 2lbs, minus the weight of the bucket is 20. 6lbs and I'll put that in kilos too, and that is from about 10 or 12 plants or so in an area no bigger than 3ft x 3ft or a meter square.
And I started off originally with about 10 of these little tubers here and look what they've grown into, that is prolific, in fact when it comes to yield for the space it occupies, artichokes are way, way up there with the most prolific plants. Now it's no wonder this is often touted as the one crop you need to grow in case of the apocalypse, I can see why! Jerusalem artichokes aren't actually from Jerusalem and actually bear no resemblance or relation to globe artichokes either which are in fact a type of thistle.
These guys are in fact more closely related to sunflowers and when you consider their lofty habit and cheery yellow flowers you can really see why. And that's probably where they get their alternative name of sunchokes from. These guys can grow really, really tall, sort of 10ft or 3m plus and they flower in profusion in the late summer so this makes them a really decorative plant in their own right.
The name Jerusalem artichoke is likely a corruption of the Italian for sunflower "girasole" which means turning to the sun, and the artichoke part, well that's probably because they bear an uncanny resemblance in taste to the globe artichoke. Either way these humbly, knobbly tubers pack a seriously nutritious punch, having a slightly sweet, slightly nutty, unctious umami taste. Why they aren't more popular, I don't know, but we're going to change that today aren't we!
Once you've got a patch of Jerusalem artichokes going, you can keep them coming in the same piece of ground year after year simply by replanting a portion of your crop to keep them coming. And in this way they act very much like a perennial crop, coming year after year with the merest effort from you. Now this little lot grew in a slightly shaded spot surrounded by shrubbery.
If you grow them in full sun, well you can expect even more tubers. I'm actually going to move my Jerusalem artichoke bed to a new area, because last year I found they just grew so tall that they actually flopped over and got in the way of surrounding crops. Now for this very reason you might want to grow them in their own dedicated bed away from other crops or even in a large container, kind of this sort of size, anything that keeps them in bounds and from becoming a bit of a nuisance.
This area down here should be absolutely perfect, it gets some shade, but importantly gets a bit more sun during the height of the day when it is sunny at least. Now the soil here is relatively well drained and I've improved it with plenty of well rotted manure, a couple of barrow loads spread over the area. Jerusalem artichokes actually grow really well even in poor soils, but if you can improve it, well it's going to give it extra oomph to get even more tubers.
Now let me show you what I've done, I've held back some of the tubers to replant and I've gone for nice, smooth tubers like this with plenty of buds on them to grow. And I'm going to space them roughly 18in which is 45cm apart in both directions. Now you could go a bit closer than this and even a bit further apart say 2ft or 60cm if you had quite a big area to cover and we're trying to be economical with your spacing.
And with them all beautifully laid out it's just a matter of planting them, so for each tuber I'm making a hole about 6in or 15cm deep and then just covering them over. Now if your soil was especially sandy and free-draining, then I would probably add into the bottom of the hole, maybe a handful of garden compost and perhaps a sprinkling of something like chicken manure pellets just to help things along, but seeing as this area has been manured, then it's quite rich as well, well I don't need to do that, it can just go in as they are. [Music] There we go, now between now and next winter, these will all grow away with very little fuss from me.
The foliage is actually frost tender, but they will come up in their own time so there's very little risk of them getting clobbered by cold weather. Now they'll start quite timidly at first, but then whoosh, they'll grow away with a speed that I've never seen in any other crop, these guys grow even faster than corn! As the plants begin their thrust ever skywards you could apply a mulch of organic matter around the young shoots, something like grass clippings would be great, and if your soil is very well draining and gets pretty dry, well then do get on and water them to help power that vertiginous growth.
I like to grow a living mulch of nasturtiams at the base of my Jerusalem artichokes, they're quite shallow-rooted so they won't compete with the artichokes and they add a real welcome splash of color as well as producing lovely peppery leaves. Now because they grow so tall they also make a fantastic temporary screen and you can see in this shot here, the artichokes growing at Daylesford Organic Farm, where they helped provide a little bit of a windbreak for squash plants. And if you haven't seen that video yet, well do watch it, and I will link to it down below.
And the flowers, well they're just topnotch aren't they? And, like their close relative the sunflower, they are a real boon for bees. Now there's no harm in cutting them and bringing them indoors as cut flowers, that won't affect the developing tubers, so go ahead and do that.
Towards the end of the season as the foliage begins to die off, just cut the stems right back down to ground level, leaving a little bit of a stump, so you know where the plants are and then dig up the tubers as they're needed. Well this is the remainder of my haul, plenty of them, and here are some I've already scrubbed up, and these guys are ready for cooking. Now I guess one of the reasons artichokes aren't as popular as perhaps they should be, is their unfortunate side effect of making some people a little bit windy, hence their other nickname, the fartychoke.
This is down to a dietary fiber in the tubers called inulin, but while it can have that unfortunate side effect, it's actually very good for the old gut biome and can improve digestive health. So in short, these are terribly good for us. Harvesting the tubers after a good few hard frosts can help to lessen that unfortunate side effect.
Now I love these roasted, or my absolute favorite, blended into soups with that lovely, rich, depth of taste that they offer. You can also eat them raw, grated or cubed into salads. But if you want to reduce its wind-inducing impacts still further, then try fermenting your tubers.
Just slice up nicely clean tubers into thinnish slices like this and then we're going to mix them with a little bit of chopped up salad onion and some garlic and ginger and some salt to create a kind of briny solution. And then, 'cause I like it a bit spicy, some chili flakes and of course the salt. Now this is a little bit like a kimchi or perhaps a sauerkraut, so I'm just creating a kind of briny solution and we'll be adding a little bit of water shortly and that will naturally ferment then and naturally preserve it.
And then just press it down a bit so it's nice and compact and then fill it with water just so it's only just covered. This is now going to go indoors at room temperature in the dark to start fermenting. Now I need to burp it every now and then just release some of the air like that in case it builds up and explodes, but once the bubbles have stopped at the sides here, which means fermentation is slowing down, this is safe and it can then go in the fridge, where it should keep for at least a couple of months.
Good news! You can add Jerusalem artichokes to any plan in the Garden Planner, and as you stretch it out, it automatically calculates how many you need for the space you have, and then, the clever bit, when you go to the Plant List it will show you exactly when to plant and when you can expect to harvest your tubers along with all the other crops on your plan. If you'd like to try out the Garden Planner for free then just follow the link or the QR code over here to start your 7-day trial.
Plenty of time to plan out your garden and print off the planting list, it really is the shortcut to a successful garden. I'll catch you next time.
