I’ve been growing these for 3 years now.
Things I’ve experienced:
1. they are prolific! They’ve taken over one side of my garden beds. It is 25 feet squared and this week I tilled the side away from them and I’m seeing tore up sunchokes all were I tilled!!!
2. The chokes are still small. I tried to peel them but most are too small for this without a ton of work. Now I just clean them with scrub brush and cook unpeeled. This might make the texture unpleasant to some. Maybe they’re small because this is where I tilled them not expected to find any.
3. They are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. You don’t need to weed them; they’ll kick the weeds butts! You don’t need to water them. Mine survived and flourished even though we got no rain from mid-August (Hurricane Helene) until October. I didn’t water them because water was getting expensive.
Maybe I should just container them or plant them in the woods somewhere unless they are invasive.
OK, if I want to contain them, which I do, how deep would, say, a raised bed need to be or a container to put into the ground? Do the roots grow close to the surface or go very deep?
And are they invasive enough to not want to just grow wild on the property?