I’ve been reading up on old time staple food and am thinking of trying Jerusalem artichokes this year.
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.
I grew jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes) several years ago and if i didn’t find each and every tuber i got a new crop the next year.
I liked to slice and fry them or make a sunchoke soup with them.