The great big thread of sunchoke info - growing, storing, eating/recipes, science facts

A great infographic on sunchokes from our darling Andrés!

Jan,

My sunchokes kept vanishing without a trace. Eventually I found a sunchoke plant that was intact except that it had no root at all. The stem was standing loosely in a hole where the root should have been.

I later read that voles love to eat sunchoke tubers.

They missed one tuber, which I transplanted inside my garden fence. Over the next couple of years they spread and produced quite a bit of tubers. I dug up most of them this fall and transplanted them in several places along the woods, outside the fence. We'll see what happens.

Long story short, if you are having trouble getting sunchokes started, you may need to provide some kind of protection against small mammals.

Now I have to be careful to keep the sunchokes under control, as the core are growing very close to the raspberries, which also grow along the fence.

You would've thought sunchokes would thrive in South Florida but it's a bit too dry for them currently and growth seems stunted, and they're getting a bit of rusty colored spotting.

I made a screen out of smallish dry sunchoke stalks. I curled it up to form a teepee for my chicks and they loved it.

So, I've spent most of the day hunting for sources of various "seed" roots. I know I'd seen a ton of different varieties a couple years ago when I first began my research for producing enough food to feed a tribe of 10-12 people, plus some of the animals we hope to raise. I've just finished reading nearly every post in this thread. I have a list that includes unnamed varieties from most of the available sources. Etsy has several shops (6) offering red, white, yellow, and even one purple nameless variety for some outrageous prices. And I know I've visited the Oikos site, but I returned to find that everything was Sold Out, only to find this on the Contact Us page "Thank you for contacting me. I do respond to all emails. Questions on seeds and what I sell are important to me.  For seed availability please see Newly Harvested category on the front of the website.  The nursery is permanently closed and is no longer selling or producing plants. For that reason I may not respond to older nursery orders or plant questions related to them. Thank you again for your interest. Let me help you with your next tree crop project. Kenneth Asmus
I had carefully picked out 6 varieties I wanted to order when they were back in stock! Oh well.
So, just for posterity, the ones I was interested in are named, Big Bertha, Gute Gelbe, Urodny, Shiawassee, White Fuseau, Red Rover and Topstar (claims of carrot flavor).

I'm quite surprised by the one post saying some of the allelopathic chemicals contained are aspirin and coumarin! And have been successfully and tastily boiled and used as a wrap!? Or in a tea! This means I must find this information myself and document what I find in an already full 3 inch 3 ring binder for the medicinals either already on the property or that I want to grow once I get there and get settled. (This binder was started to meet the requirements for the BB and has grown into a monster project expanding to similar info for the animals we want to keep and another for plant guilds!!)

I'm loving the idea that sunchokes might be able to have an impact on Japanese Knotweed, because there is apparently alot of it on the 40 acres I'm headed for, and while it does have some medicinal properties, I'd rather not have to fight with it to keep a garden growing! Or the sawtooth blackberry brambles everywhere!!
Thank you to everyone who has noted the wildlife that like this plant, as I know there are rabbits and deer that roam on and through the property. I can plan accordingly, and even have a plant guild planned for the deer! I like the idea that I can naturally feed the venison that I can hunt w/o license if I am on my own property! Several does and a couple younger bucks have been seen close to the main house!

I equally appreciate the preparation suggestions in order to avoid gassiness. I look forward to trying several methods encouraged, from raw to fermented and pickled!

Now to ask those of you growing these wonderous roots who would be interested/willing to recommend a seller, or be the one(s) to assist me by selling me a few of what you have when I am finally ready to put them in the ground!? It will be at the very least several more months, or possibly another almost year before I can reach that level of "settled in", so no rush. Just sounding things out for now.

I am so grateful to this community for all the great information, super cool ideas I'd never have thought of on my own, and a bit of mentorship in the pages and pages of threads!

Now to medicate, because my back is on fire from sitting at this desk most of the day! And soon after, to bed with a hot pad!

OikosTreeCrops Update;
Heard back from Kenneth at Oikos about pointing me in a direction to find other providers/growers.

https://cultivariable.com

Did you know there are dahlia "tubers" that are edible?  Cultivariable knows. Ever heard of skerrit as an edible? Cultivariable has them along with tons of information on what they offer. Except they actively discourage ordering from them, you really need to check out this character!

Cindy Haskin wrote:Now to ask those of you growing these wonderous roots who would be interested/willing to recommend a seller, or be the one(s) to assist me by selling me a few of what you have when I am finally ready to put them in the ground!?

I have most of the Oikos varieties planted (but as you note, they're not available any more), I also got seed from ARS-GRIN, and I just planted a box of Lofthouse sunroots last week.

Pearl Sutton..Wow, that's a big difference! Hope they will rebound next year!  May Loetilo..what a sweet idea for your chickens. :)  

I loosened the dirt in the sunchoke bed. Not enough tubers to harvest any. I left them all for regrowth. We ate one.
What a messed up year.

Cindy Haskin wrote:OikosTreeCrops Update;
Heard back from Kenneth at Oikos about pointing me in a direction to find other providers/growers.

https://cultivariable.com

Did you know there are dahlia "tubers" that are edible?  Cultivariable knows. Ever heard of skerrit as an edible? Cultivariable has them along with tons of information on what they offer. Except they actively discourage ordering from them, you really need to check out this character!

I have ordered twice from Cultivariable. They're good you just have to understand it's a one man band operation and things don't get packed and mailed the moment you order.

I ordered tps (true potato seed) and went ahead and got the dahlia mix. They seem to be pretty similar to sunchokes but seed breeding is significantly easier. We'll see.

Does anyone know where I can order 25+ lbs of sunchokes from?

Emileah Anderson wrote:Does anyone know where I can order 25+ lbs of sunchokes from?

This time of year it's iffy. I ordered a bag of them in the late summer/early fall a couple of years ago from Azure Standard, sold as groceries, planted in my garden
https://www.azurestandard.com

They are a seasonal thing, don't store a long time, not sure if any exist this time of year.

Pearl Sutton wrote:

Emileah Anderson wrote:Does anyone know where I can order 25+ lbs of sunchokes from?

This time of year it's iffy. I ordered a bag of them in the late summer/early fall a couple of years ago from Azure Standard, sold as groceries, planted in my garden
https://www.azurestandard.com

They are a seasonal thing, don't store a long time, not sure if any exist this time of year.

Great idea thank you!

Pearl Sutton wrote:

They are a seasonal thing, don't store a long time, not sure if any exist this time of year.

Hi Pearl, from my experience, the sunroots tend to dry up and wrinkle when dug up in late fall and the flavor isn't that good.  When they are stored in a moist and cool condtion either in storage or in ground for a few months, the flavor improves a lot. That is about right now in winter they taste almost like water chestnuts. A few months more they are all getting ready to grow. I haven't tried eating the germinating green tubers but they will be very tought for shipping and handling. In the  picture below,  i tossed out a bag of budding tubers outside. They stayed there for a month before i found room to plant them in.

Last year i harvested in Nov and replanted the bigger ones. I stored the rest in ground wrapped up in fabric bags covered with several inches of soil. They are easy to access and stay clean this way.

Pearl Sutton wrote:
Are the red ones much different in taste or growing preferences?

I haven't tried any red skinned ones from mail order. When I was a kid we had a patch on the farm that I loved. Mom and Dad wouldn't do anything with 'those things'! I found another patch intown, decades later that have a much milder taste than the ones I remember. I've also found two other varieties nearby, both are white/tan skinned. One resembles the Stampede variety, very knobby. They are as tasty as the ones I remember. The other one is also white/tan skinned but has a terribly strong turnipy/herbal flavor. So, just to let you know, there can be pretty wide variations. Just because someone says one color is better or worse doesn't mean squat until you taste them or the seller has honestly tasted them.

Emileah Anderson wrote: Are the red ones much different in taste or growing preferences?

There are a LOT of varieties. Lots are red, all are different. I have never met one being sold that wasn't good, and they all kind of grow the same way, minor differences in bloom time etc.
So I'd say if you see reds you can get, that's a good option!

Growing these for the first time this year from seed, hoping they'll be perennial in zone 3 with some heavy mulch.   The seed I have is isn't a named variety, are there actually varieties grown from seed or are we talking about cultivars propagated from the tubers?

There's some good information here about the growing season, I would sure like to collect our own seed in the fall - maybe a few plants will make their way into the greenhouse before we get frost.  

Doug McGregor wrote:Growing these for the first time this year from seed, hoping they'll be perennial in zone 3 with some heavy mulch.   The seed I have is isn't a named variety, are there actually varieties grown from seed or are we talking about cultivars propagated from the tubers?

There's some good information here about the growing season, I would sure like to collect our own seed in the fall - maybe a few plants will make their way into the greenhouse before we get frost.  

Cultivars propagated from tubers if you want a named variety.
From what I have heard, it takes at least two varieties to set viable seed, so you are going to have mixed genetics.

Anyone have suggestions on what spacing to use when growing sunchokes for food?

I have 2 unknown varieties in our garden. One was given to us by a nearby gardener. They are kind of yellow colored and pretty large. The other is more of a burgundy color and was found growing as a thicket in a gravel ditch locally. I dug some up to eat and saved some for planting. Its been 3 years since planting them both and the yellows are consistently bigger than the burgundy ones. They are both growing in similar soil (clay, compost, coarse sand and a little bit of woodchips) and both are in buried containers with drainage holes to prevent them taking over the garden.

The yellows are in a circular container maybe 2’ in diameter and I try to limit that to about 5 plants. The burgundy ones are in a square container maybe 4 square feet and it always ends up like a thicket. I thin them out during the growing season but the tubers never get bigger than what you could eat in 1-2 bites. I probably need more space between plants but not sure how much.

If starting in a new location, I plant sunroots about 18" apart.

Usually, I grow them in a perennial bed, therefore I thin them after they sprout. I do this primarily by tilling perpendicular to the row. I guess that's about 24" apart based on the width of the tiller.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:If starting in a new location, I plant sunroots about 18" apart.

Usually, I grow them in a perennial bed, therefore I thin them after they sprout. I do this primarily by tilling perpendicular to the row. I guess that's about 24" apart based on the width of the tiller.

But if you till perpendicular to the rows to remove some, aren't you concerned that you will have even more from all the little pieces that get chopped? I know that is what would happen in my sand.
I make a point of removing every single delicious morsel every fall to avoid this problem ... and I still have this problem... and I pull them by hand!

I till multiple times during the growing season.

A sweet spot occurs, when the plants are about 10" tall, that they have exhausted the previous year's root, and haven't yet started making new tubers.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:I till multiple times during the growing season.
A sweet spot occurs, when the plants are about 10" tall, that they have exhausted the previous year's root, and haven't yet started making new tubers.

Tilling multiple times makes sense in this case. [But I'll confess I have never found the sweet spot with mine: they seem to grow at any time of the year]
I think that in sand, they can plunge so deep that they can just keep surfacing. I once found a small root 20 " underground... and it was still surfacing in August, in a raised bed. Maybe if my beds had a bottom so they could not go so deep?