Jerusalem Artichoke

the best way to eat them is sliced thin and air fried or roasted. Theyre so tasty when you brown then up and they get a little crispy on the edges. yum. it makes them not only palatable but delicious.

i had ‘stampede’ ‘red fuseau’ and ‘white fuseau’ here plus some wildlings. If you want to get rid of them, dont harvest them. Seriously, they thrive on disturbance. If you try to dig them all up, they come back in force. You can also pull then when the shoots are fully pushed and the tubers have used their reserves up. Dont ever put them in your garden. People of a certain age here all have horror stories of doing that, and most wont grow them for that reason. The way I see it, you dont keep pigs in your livingroom, but theyre still worth raising. Speaking of pigs, sunchokes are primo animal forage. You can (from what Ive read) grow a big patch of them and then turn the pigs on them. theyll root out every tuber and it will finish them nicely. the whole plant is good animal feed, not just the tubers.

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An older German woman I knew made the best buttermilk/grated artichoke pancakes I ever had. I still remember them from 40 years ago!

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There’s potato pancakes. Why not artichoke pancakes!

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that does sound good

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does anyone know a good source/store that sells named varieties and ships tubers in the US? found these sites from a google search but not sure if reputable. cultivariable, etsy

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Cultivariable is very reputable.

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I got all of mine from @JohannsGarden . Not only is he a forum member but he has a beautiful nursery and a ton of knowledge and time spent with his products.

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Just harvested a portion of my first crop.

I grow them exactly as @Itmaybejj does. FWIW, I stored the seed tubers in a plastic bag in a fridge for many months this winter with no apparent ill effects.

Here’s a pic of the output from one buried pot.

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Great looking roots.

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This is my first year growing Jerusalem artichokes. I planted the gifted tubers in pots buried in the ground as well. The stems have nearly dried down entirely and I am looking forward to digging the first of 8 pots to see how bountiful the harvest is.

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Do you need to peel them, and if so, is it difficult?

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There is no need to peel aside from trimming off any blemishes or pockets where dirt may be trapped.

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What varieties is everyone growing? I have stampede and Fuseau here, though I haven’t harvested them in several years. I do like them, but theyve gone by the wayside for me of late. Im much more excited about yacon these days. Its much more of a fruit than a starchy tuber. It has as much or more inulin as sunchokes from what I gather, and is not only palatable but very tasty. Sunchokes are great fried, but prepared nearly any other way they can be a bit much even for me, and I like oddball stuff. If I had livestock though, especially pigs, Id grow a huge patch of them. They make great fodder from what Ive read.

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So was digging the garden for spring amd found that the voles hadn’t eaten all the tubers. But interestingly some of the tubers turned red in response to damage while others stayed white

I wonder what caused the difference

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they do that. I think the white ones will eventually turn red. its an oxidizing response perhaps. Voles actually help the sunchokes quite a bit IME. The more they eat (counterintuitively) the better the patch seems to grow the next year. I have patches that were barely disturbed (harvested, munched by voles, or otherwise) and theyve almost disappeared

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