Using jerusalem artichokes to outcompete bracken ferns?

Hi everyone just wondering if anyone has had any experience with using jerusalem artichokes to compete with bracken?the land I'm living on is littered with it.cheers everyone

seems to me that what I have read about sunchokes is that they might be aggressive enough to do what you are wanting to do.

Here is a thread you might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/sunchokes

Hi Cian,
If you get a dense enough stand of artichokes you may be able to shade out the bracken, although it might take a few years. They are also supposed to be allelopathic although the effect is greater on some plants than others. I'd be interested to hear how you get on. I have a little bracken here, it is the default vegetation on neglected croftland.
Have you found J artichokes do well for you? I've been trying them again recently, when I tried them before they just disappeared! I suspect slugs....at the time I had quite a slug problem. The other problem is the wind, they tend to get wind rock here (it always amuses me when they are suggested as windbreaks for gardens) I think they can be pruned back shorter with little effect. I'm trying a dwarf variety this year which I'm hoping to do better with. The other thing I've heard, is to leave the tuber in and hravest in the second winter: that gives a better yield.
You've got me thinking though, I'm looking for plants to break up compacted soil and add biomass, artichokes may well be another thing I can try.

Hiya,
I tried this last year. I found that when the Jerusalem Artichokes were getting going, early in the season, I had to go around and manually pull out the bracken stalks - which were coming up much faster.

Once the Jerusalem artichokes were underway, however, they did indeed seem to suppress bracken growth to some degree, as well as other fast-growing aggressive plants like comfrey and thistle. I had planted them somewhat sparsely and the only maintenance I did was maybe five or ten minutes of pulling out weeds around them (not even all the weeds), which I did only about twice over the whole summer.

I'm hoping the patch will come back thicker this year and continue to do this job even better. The other side of the small field had no Jerusalem Artichokes and suffered from a mass of bracken and bramble, which I cleared by hand and used as mulch on other things.

I will note that the Jerusalem Artichokes in this patch did not do nearly as well as the ones grown in my other land, where they don't have to compete with anything except grass, clover, etc. But they still grew tall and yielded a good crop, with no fertiliser or anything. Literally just chucked under bits of sod lifted with a spade - not even proper holes.

I think a very thick patch of JA, grown year after year (maybe with mulch in the first few years to help establish it) would probably be very effective and healthy large tubers left in the ground would help it get a head start on the bracken.

Even now, the ground where the Jerusalem Artichokes grew has a lot less weeds and shorter grass than the other side. It's interesting.

Bracken also makes great mulch for potatoes, I'm finding, if you have lots of it to spare. No need to compost it.

Two seasons on in the battle of the beast plants- how did the patch grow Rudyard? Were you able to keep it going last year?

Since bracken ferns remediate soil I wonder what they are telling the OP (original poster) about the soil?

It would be nice to hear from Cian about how this worked out.

Nancy Reading wrote:Two seasons on in the battle of the beast plants- how did the patch grow Rudyard? Were you able to keep it going last year?

Ah, well, I've moved to Portugal now so I've no idea what they're up to! Someone visited the place in the autumn though and said there were still lots of Jerusalem artichokes growing there - no idea how well they were doing or not though!

Hope you are doing well at the new place!

I keep dreaming of moving... or at least visiting the Azores, Portugal.

I was looking at a home in a neighborhood on .5AC a few weeks ago there (online). It has a massive brick/cob looking garden wall that surrounded the place with the Entire Interior set-in fruit trees (even citrus!) and garden (landscaped in design). The home had a detached garage apartment as well. Both came fully furnished for $205k U.S. asking. The whole neighborhood was on a plateau several hundred feet above a blue ocean that you could see down below from the yard... and in front of some very large and beautiful mountains. That particular island is known for its dairy and cheese from all of the cows.

I just got some smooth-skinned type of Jerusalem artichokes for planting into the garden this year. I will be digging up the tubers this Fall/Winter and planting into the corners of the cow pasture... and making a hedgerow edge with them along the front road.