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My surprise sunchoke tuber
I remember Christmas Eve, 2005, very distinctly. In nearly every way, it was not your typical Christmas Eve. For starters, it was a very warm Colorado winter day, which in and of itself is not that unusual for Colorado, but came in very handy for what the day held for us. We were surrounded by a handful of very good friends and spent the day madly loading a U-Haul truck full of our household goods and later unloading them less than two miles away into the house that we still call home today.
There were many things about our house that I remember seeing "the potential" in in those first months, and as soon as we recovered from moving in on Christmas (like in March) I set about plotting the gardens. The generous over-sized lot was literally a blank canvas thanks to the previous homeowner's large and highly destructive canine population.
The spot where the vegetable patch would go presented itself right away; a nice twenty by twenty foot plot of land with full sun starting around 11 AM in the summer months and lasting until sunset. Over the last three summers that plot of land has morphed quite considerably. Preliminary raised beds made from cinder blocks that we found in the yard gave way to wooden raised beds with sprinkler system access.
The soil in the yard is actually quite rich and fertile leaning slightly to a more clay-like consistency which is typical to our region. Each year I have amended the soil, adding anything from compost to manure to coffee grounds from my local Starbucks. When the new wooden beds went in last year I ordered top soil from a local landscape supply company. While waiting for the soil to arrive, I loaded the bottoms of the beds with any organic material I could find. Grass clippings and produce scraps from the kitchen all went in to naturally decompose under the six or more inches of topsoil and compost that was used to fill each of the beds.
Among the many things that have been planted in the garden, the summer of 2007 saw a large population of sunflowers in the mix. Last summer random sunflowers popped up throughout the garden. Some of those sunflowers were left to grow where they sprouted, some were transplanted and others made their way to the compost pile.
One of those sunflowers came up in the crack at the end of one of the beds on the outside of the bed. I left it to grow where it chose to and didn't think much of it. As the summer went on, that sunflower kept on growing. When it grew taller than me I expected to see a large flower appear at the top, but that never materialized. Eventually the plant produced a small sunflower about 5 inches across, not at all what I was expecting from such a large plant. I took it for a fluke and thought no more about it. Fall turned to winter and the large sunflower was a distant memory.
Fast forward to earlier this week. The forecast was calling for rain so I was anxious to get the compost on the garden beds before the rain came. After lightly tilling the existing dirt, I applied a generous amount of compost (due to the fact that the top soil I purchased last year had more sand than soil and quickly turned to a concrete like substance after each rain or watering, but that's another story for another time) and began working the compost in to the top layer of the soil and breaking up large chunks of dirt with my hands.
At the end of the bed where the large sunflower had stood last summer my digging unearthed the most bizarre looking tuber that was covered with over half a dozen bulbous looking growths. I hadn't thought of that big sunflower since that fall until just that moment and then it all started making sense to me.
I brought the interesting specimen into the house and did some quick research that confirmed my suspicions. Obviously, when I had started filling the new raised beds with grass clippings and kitchen scraps, a left over scrap of sunchoke, or Jerusalem artichoke, had made it's way into the dirt and my crazy sunflower wasn't so crazy and incongruous after all.
Sunchokes are a tuber vegetable that grow like a potato some consider to taste similar to an artichoke, hence their other name, Jerusalem artichoke. As evidenced in my fortuitous garden find, they are a hardy plant and can spread quickly. If you choose to grow them intentionally, provide them plenty of room for the large plants. Harvest should yield a considerable amount and is important to containing the quickly spreading plant.
I found these sunchoke growing instructions on the Farm Radio web site:
Plant sunchoke tubers the same way you would plant potatoes. You can either plant the whole tuber or you can plant a piece of the tuber which has several seed eyes, also called buds. Plant the tubers 8 centimetres deep and 30 centimetres apart. Thirty centimetres is about the distance from your elbow to the tip of your longest finger. The rows should be one metre apart. Be warned! Once you have planted sunchokes it is very hard to get rid of them. This is because each piece of tuber left in the ground grows again the next year. So plant sunchokes in a place where you want them to grow for a long time.
Sunchokes require a growing season of 150 days - that's about five months. The stalks will grow to be two to four metres high, depending on the fertility of the soil and the amount of space between each plant. When the sunchoke shoots are 10 centimetres high - that is as high as your ankle - remove any weeds. Then spread straw or dried leaves on the soil around each plant. This will smother any new weeds, and help to keep the soil cool and moist.
I separated my tuber and replanted it in a new location. I am looking forward to seeing the plants this summer and harvesting the tubers intentionally this time around!
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