Usualy you use that term for exotic or non native plants that spread and outcompete native plants or deal ecological damage.
If not seen sunchokes make seeds or spread over vast distances. So the “invasion” is just a few foot a year. Hard to imagine them running amok and being hard to control in nature. (Although it thats the case. it’s good to know and plan accordingly when growing them.)
Especialy if the deer like to help you with “control”
An “invasive” plant and “invasive spices” (vs native) are different things.
As a plant, sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke is invasive and hard to control.
Also, attracting deer is never a good thing to your yard and your garden…
Jerusalem artichokes are considered invasive by some gardeners, and flowers should be cut before seeds develop if you don’t want the plant jumping the fence. If you’re worried, you can place starters in their own dedicated plot.
believe me I get it. This is what my property in DC looks like. Not really worth making a capital case over. The whole reason I started this post was to experiment with growing in controlled conditions. The funny thing was I didn’t know my field was covered in JA’s until after i bought some to grow my self. What unusual vegetables should I grow that I’ve never heard of? - General Gardening - Growing Fruit
Not sure even Roundup will do. Those are the tubers. Roundup may kill to the roots of some, may not all of them. And you may need to apply a couple times. You can’t dig them up from a large field. Too much work.
But if you only plant them in controlled space, you are fine. Just do not let them set seeds.
My impression may be false, but having grown Jerusalem artichokes for something like 10-12 years my impression is that left unattended they’ll grow so thick that they’ll tend to choke themselves out and other things around them will then outcompete them.
I believe if unattended, some may produce seeds and spread via deer or birds. @ lordkiwi has a wild patch in his yard. Not sure how it formed.
I grew them for two seasons. Then it became a liability with the deer. And I do not get enough interest from the family to continue growing them. So I removed them. I kept them in one area and they did not spread. I can still find some of them two years after I remove them.
Finding them two years or even three or four… after you’ve removed them seems very consistent with my experience, but my impression is that the long-term (roughly 3-8 year) trend can be toward dying out completely rather than being strong long-term survivors or even spreading (not counting however they might spread from seed, which is something I haven’t seen at all.)
Yes, I agree if you are diligently enough to remove them. I can’t speak about the seeds since I only grew them for a couple of years. But the online resources mentioned seeds.
The problem was the deer. They can cause havoc inside my fenced garden area.
That’s not even what I mean. My impression is that they’ll tend to die out simply from neglect without any special effort to remove them, even though they’re extremely vigorous and aggressive short-term. Like I said, I could be wrong, but I have been growing them for something like 10+ years, and that’s been my impression.
just a theory. But maybe your soil has a nematode that likes sunchokes and slowly builds up till they can kill the sunchoke over years.
For me, if never seen seeds around here. thats why i was les worried about invasiveness. But if it makes seeds for you id be verry carful in managing it.
although an invasive foodplant sounds nice in theory. I don’t know many people that would eat enough sunchokes to even make a dent in a invasive population. Not to mention the harvesting damage to the enviroment. from digging deep enough to harvest most sunchokes.
i can’t think of a year where i even ate 5% the weight of my potato cunsumption in sunchokes. I certainly would not want to eat pounds a week.
Some times a few is great but would not want em as a staple diet.
In my situation, any piece that left over in the soil will re-grow, mature and stay. If unattended, they will continue to spread. I do not see anything dies off on its own.
Anyhow. I just tell from my own experience. Some of my friends still grow them.
It is not a problem if you grow them in large container. With light potting soil, the tuber grows larger and much easier to harvest. It was really hard to dig in early winter in heavy soil.
If you happen to remember, let us know if your experience remains the same after another few years. Everything you’ve said is very consistent with my short-term experience. After only a couple of years of growing them I didn’t see the apparent longer term trend that I seem to be seeing now. I’m guessing you might consider them a lot less aggressive after another few years, but maybe your experience will be very different from mine.
When I was actively digging and removing 75-90% of the tubers the plant seemed to return happily, but once I stopped digging and removing a significant percentage it just dwindled to almost non-existence.
I, perhaps, have 2-3 plants remaining in an area (5 X 20 feet) that was once filled.
If I’m not mistaken, it’s native to the eastern US (and possibly beyond), so I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about broader spread (beyond the immediate planting area) since it’s already established as a native.
