Jerusalem artichokes straight from the ground - with a Bocking 14 comfrey plant too.
On Sunday, our volunteers harvested our little crop of Jerusalem artichokes, mainly because we wanted to give some to a visiting student from a local college gardening club. We love to share plants and seeds with other gardeners. Six of us harvested just 15 or so plants. But it is fun to do. Ours were a gift a few years ago from Empty Common Community garden and aren’t as knobbly as others so easy to clean before eating. At Nightingale, they are growing in a poor spot and are always neglected - so are easy to grow. If they are in a better place, they have attractive yellow flowers and crop very heavily. Maybe we need to find them a better place to grow…
The large tubers we shared to eat and the small ones we saved to try out in local gardens and plots. They were new to our volunteers, who have come to live in Cambridge from all over the world. In the UK, Jerusalems are mainly eaten in soups or roasted. They taste similar to a parsnip. It will be interesting to see how our volunteers adapt them to their own culinary traditions. I have already heard they are delicious fried like chips and also made into rice congee.
Confusingly, there are other types of artichokes:
We grow globe artichokes around the garden. They were gifts from local gardens and plots and also we grow different types from seed. They do well in our free draining soil. We grow them mainly for their spectacular purple-centred flowers, which are very popular with garden visitors and also bees. The grey foliage is also beautiful and gives welcome structure over the Winter. They are cooked in quite a different way to the Jerusalems. Delicious but a bit of an investment in time.
Globe artichokes look a bit like our much taller cardoons, a ‘cousin’ to the globes, but their leaf stems are blanched to eat rather than the flower buds (I have never tried this). They were a gift from a local allotmenter - they had self-seeded all over her plot.
We also have some Chinese artichokes (bought from Incredible Vegetables) growing in one raised bed and we dug one up for the student gardeners. They have tiny white tubers and are a delicacy, tasting a little like water chestnuts.
We will aim to grow some red dwarf artichokes (also bought from Incredible Vegetables), when they have bulked up a bit more in a volunteer’s allotment. Last season, they tasted very good and are a bit easier to grow.