Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus)
By Jon
Thursday, December 6, 2007
You’d think they were tall bunchy sunflowers. We are
planting some today (thanks bobbett) at the new farm
in front of the grapes to paint a pretty picture from
the road to lure folks into the farm stand we will be
building before spring from junk yard scraps.
I intend to plant them for my first time in a day or
two. In a long row full length of the field. Once
they are up and growing come spring I intend to grow
the cardinal vine to run up them to better draw the
eye toward the market garden, and to coax in
hummingbirds, honeybees, and customers. I’ve helped
grow them for others but never in my own gardens until
now, have I grown Jerusalem Artichoke for myself.
They are an invasive rascal with deep reaching roots
that draw their nutrients from the deep, enjoy
frequent watering and can be planted in areas that are
a bit squishy but they do not like wet feet. Yet may
be better able to withstand drought than crops who
have a shallower root system. I like them because they
provide a dense windbreak for the rest of the garden,
and give a pretty picture to anyone driving by.
Birds flock to the sunflower like blooms, and seem to
sit and wait til the seed ripen so they can pounce on
them and gobble them down scattering starts of the
plant far and wide. Livestock enjoy the foliage and
will eat it right down to their roots. Hogs will even
eat its roots, so if you have wild hogs or even wart
hogs you’ll need to enmesh your plantings of them to
save them from the wildlife. Horses were kept alive
over winter by eating Jerusalem artichoke foliage
gathered then bound in wet deer hide and buried til
needed. Other things were also fed them that we have
talked about already and which I grow some of here as
well as on the new farm.
Rich in potassium diabetics can safely eat Jerusalem
artichokes for they contain no starch. Its
carbohydrate is in the form of natural sugars.
Start harvesting the tubers about six weeks after
blooms dry up. Native Americans did not allow it to
flower, thinking the tubers would be bigger and more
plentiful if the blooms were kept picked off for
medicine making.
They are edible raw, or cooked in any manner anything
else is cooked at your homestead and can be grown for
human consumption, alcohol production, fructose
production as well as silage making and for livestock
feed. You can even dry them then pound them into
flour.
In France the artichoke has been used for wine and
beer production for many years. Ethanol and butanol,
two fuel grade alcohols, can be produced from
Jerusalem artichokes. The cost of producing ethanol
currently is not competitive with gasoline prices, and
therefore the success of ethanol plants has been
limited.
When you get right down to the bare facts, native
Americans provided a LOT of the plants, fruits and
medicines early America depended on. And without them,
most of the early pioneers would have perished.
Today's vegetable gardener takes advantage of the
variety of crops and cultivars in his or her favorite
seed catalogs unaware of how many of those crops
originated with the first gardeners here: Native
Americans.
This vegetable is rich in alkaline mineral elements,
particularly potassium, which represents more than 50%
of all the rest of the mineral elements combined. It’s
also a medicinal plant happiest when protecting
diabetics and helping clean out the gut of toxins.
Artichoke extract has been shown to improve digestion,
liver function, and help lower high ldl cholesterol
levels and prevent heart disease and arthrosclerosis.
Reported to be aperient, aphrodisiac, cholagogue,
diuretic, spermatogenic, stomachic, and tonic,
Jerusalem artichoke is a remedy for diabetes and
rheumatism.
Hand-digging with forks yields the largest percentage
of the tubers in the soil but is laborious and
expensive. Tubers are small, and picking proceeds
slowly. Tubers are difficult to store because of the
thin skin which permits shrinkage and injury that
leads to decay. They keep perfectly if left in the
soil until needed, freezing does no damage. Although
they cannot be harvested from frozen soil, tubers for
spring planting are best left in place until spring.
They should then be harvested and handled promptly
before they sprout appreciably. Tubers should not be
left in poorly drained soil. Good, sound, disease free
tubers can be successfully kept several months in cold
storage at a high humidity and a temperature of 0°C.
After harvesting in the spring, volunteer growth
should be discouraged by deep plowing in late spring,
and the crop followed with a late-sown, quick-growing
hay crop or a cultivated crop, or rotated as in France
with oats, clover and wheat, but corn, rye, potatoes,
or turnips may also be used.
For survival, Jerusalem Artichokes do no look like
food, hence they’d be left alone in the field just so
you can harvest enough sun chokes to tide you til you
next crop ripens. I intend to plant wild patches of
them after we harvest our first crop in the fall of
2008.
Jon-OHG Founder, and homesteader in W. Ky. Zone 6 or 7
See how easy it is to grow your own organic food and learn how to feed your family healthier on the pages of OHG found here...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organichomesteadinggardening/
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• Fri 7 Dec 2007 - Hi
Yes they are. Do you grow thwm?
Grandma Rosie
Edited by GrandmaRosie on Fri 7 Dec 2007 at 2:11 AM