Most of the summer main crops have been used out of the garden, but one of the remaining plants still to be harvested is a stand of Jerusalem artichokes. These are a great winter crop and generate a surprising amount of tubers and they are easy to grow.
In my garden Jerusalem artichokes are rarely munched by slugs and as they don’t suffer from other debilitating plant diseases such as potato blight, they are a good choice for a late autumn crop. You can harvest them now and it is surprising how many tubers are lurking beneath the soil.
They are a very tasty and useful crop and great for winter soups, potato dishes and roasting in the oven. They have a slightly sweet, nutty flavour and though they are a bit of a fiddle to clean or peel I think they are very underrated. But, Jerusalem artichokes harbor a secret and if you’ve ever eaten them you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. Wind! And I’m not talking about Isobars and South Westerlies!
From a garden perspective, once you’ve got Jerusalem artichokes you have them forever as every tiny tuber overwinters in the ground to sprout up again in spring. But they are also very useful as a summer screen. I planted a row of the tubers parallel to a garden boundary that separates my garden from next-door’s car. Within a few weeks of sprouting in spring, the plants leap up to a height of five or six feet and makes an excellent living visual barrier or a great wind break for the veg patch (no pun intended!).
The plants eventually flower in late summer with a small yellow, sunflower-like bloom that can be cut for flower arrangements. The stand of really strong stems remains into the winter, when I normally cut them down to ground level before harvesting the knobbly underground tubers.
