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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
May Lotito wrote:My sunchokes bloom abundantly in October, providing food for bees and butterflies. But since the seeds are not viable, am I supposed to remove the tops so energy won't go to the seed heads? Will the seed heads feed birds later on? I snapped some plants shorter since high wind just blew them sideways. Has anybody compared yields with or without deheading the flowers/seeds?
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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
May Lotito wrote:Thanks for the reply. I planted these tubers too shallow on heavy clay soil. They grew very well though, up to 12 ft with branching flower stems at the end. These all make them very unstable in high wind. One clump ( from a single tuber) was totally uprooted so I dig out all the tubers. They were all within top 1 ft of soil and weighed over 8 lbs. Quite a surprise as I thought they wouldn't filled out so much until the above ground parts die back.
I will let other clumps die back and compare the yield to the early harvest.
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Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
I think that in order to get nice big uniform roots is to make sure to remove all of them in the Fall, select your best and replant within a month, like garlic.
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
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May Lotito wrote:
Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
I think that in order to get nice big uniform roots is to make sure to remove all of them in the Fall, select your best and replant within a month, like garlic.
I bought mine off local craigslist: $20 for 4 lbs, freshly dug out of ground. I probably ate too much at a time and got gassy so I grew them as privacy screens mostly. But today I tried moderate amount and so far so good 6 hours later. Guess sunchoke will be a staple food for me too.
I plan on doing the same: remover all the tubers and sort them out. Only the biggest one will be planted back for next season and smaller ones cooked or pickled.
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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
May Lotito wrote:I am considering planting medium size tubers rather than the big onesback in the ground. I dug up several more clumps as the top starting to die back. Clumps with 3 to 4 stems yield 13 lbs on average, good size and evenly distributed. And for the biggest plant with 8 stems, also the one that toppled over in the storm, the area 2 ft wide and 1 ft deep was filled with tubers. So many got no room to grow they were squeezed flat. The yield was over 30 lbs from this single plant. I had to dig a bigger hole in ground to put them back for storage.
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Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:Also, is your soil sandy, like mine? Roots will travel a bit father in sand than they will in clay.
If you make 2 beds, one with large tubers and one with smaller tubers, but both of them in great soil, you will get your answer. Please let us know how they compare. This is very interesting to me.
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
May Lotito wrote:I found another use for sunchoke tubers: chicken food. They always came over and pecked on the tubers when I was digging. Leaving whole tubers for the chicken is too wasteful so I dice a few into tidbit everyday as feed. They are more welcomed in cold days, when water freezes easily and the chickens can get some moisture without wetting their wattles.
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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
May Lotito wrote:I have been tasting the sunchoke tubers harvested in different times, the later ones are less earthy and raw but still not sweet. Once I sampled a jar a unfinished fermented sunchoke, one actually was so sweet and crunchy I thought I was eating water chestnut. I was not able to reproduce the result however.
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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
With appropriate microbes, minerals and organic matter, there is no need for pesticides or herbicides.
Faye Streiff wrote:This past year I started a new patch for the sunchokes. Threw out winter wheat in Late November over the patch, and a little light mulch of grass clippings since I could not rake it in. Both did well in spite of deer damage to both of them, but I think that light “deer pruning” was good for the sunchokes as it made them bunch up and grow much denser tops, and more able to send energy to the tubers. When the wheat ripened in late spring, I just cut off or broke off the tops and left the long stems, which fell over and further mulched the sunchokes, now 12 inches or so high. I also save those dried sunchoke stems for kindling and firestarter.
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With appropriate microbes, minerals and organic matter, there is no need for pesticides or herbicides.
Faye Streiff wrote:The deer only topped the sunchokes while they were small, as I think they were mostly after the ripening wheat. Sunchokes grow back bigger/better than ever and did produce blossoms. I have them in several patches, and these were just as productive as the others.
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Faye Streiff wrote:This past year I started a new patch for the sunchokes. Threw out winter wheat in Late November over the patch, and a little light mulch of grass clippings since I could not rake it in. Both did well in spite of deer damage to both of them, but I think that light “deer pruning” was good for the sunchokes as it made them bunch up and grow much denser tops, and more able to send energy to the tubers. When the wheat ripened in late spring, I just cut off or broke off the tops and left the long stems, which fell over and further mulched the sunchokes, now 12 inches or so high. I also save those dried sunchoke stems for kindling and firestarter.
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
May Lotito wrote:
Hi, Faye, the combo of sunchoke and winter wheat worked out great. Thanks for sharing.
I am tinkering on using sunchoke in a polyculture of chicken feed. There will be sunchoke, broomcorn, mung bean, daikon radish and winter rye. The reasons for choosing these species are multi folds:
They consist of warm and cool season broadleaf and grasses, plus nitrogen fixer to keep ground covered and have living roots in soil year round. Two major principles for building soil in the book " a soil owner's manual".
Besides, deep roots from broomcorn will draw water from deep ground and the tall stalks help supporting the sunchokes growing in poor and compact soil. They tend to need irrigation and topped over in high wind later in the season.
The leaves, seeds and tubers are favored by my chickens. Above ground growth provides lots of biomass for mulching.
Kind of a 5 sister version for chicken! Let's see how it turns out.
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Blaine Clark wrote:
Keep us updated on this mixture. 'Chokes are a bit allelopathic, good at keeping some of their competition at bay. Mine don't hold back strawberries, have some effect on Lemon Balm, no effect on garlic, wipes out horseradish, have some effect on Day Lilies, cuts most grasses right down and stunts Lambsquarters etc. The effects aren't consistent at all, so I'm VERY interested in what succeeds, what does so-so and what doesn't make it.
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
Jonathan Hodges wrote:I planted my first tubers 3 years ago, so I'd say I'm still in the experimentation phase, but have some insight that some may find useful. I planted the first group of tubers in a section of my garden beds that I also planted hybrid poplars at 2 foot intervals to grow for firewood (currently in the process of replacing these with black locust seedlings). I have had no issues with them spreading, but this is likely because I harvest the majority of them each fall to transplant to other areas and the deer give them a beating all summer. However, they respond beautifully, by becoming bushy, almost like a coppiced tree after the deer clear their foliage and soft parts of the stems. In essence they have functioned as a trap crop for me, keeping the deer off of the young trees (that are now 15-20' tall in their fourth year!).
I also have bulb flowers growing in the spaces between the trees. This works very well, as the flowers come up and finish flowering before the sunroots wake up for the season. In mid summer, save for deer trimming, they provide a dense shade that helps keep weeds and soil temperature down, reducing work and watering needs for the young trees.
Overall, as with any plant or animal, sunroots are great when used in the right context. This year I dedicated a 30" x 100' bed to growing them, as I intend to integrate them into a future hedge to keep the deer out of my main garden area, and I planted comfrey root cuttings along the outside edges of the bed with 3 rows of sunroots at about 3' between each tuber. Next year, once that is all established, I will also seed pole beans with them.
For the stalks in the fall, I cut them and put them through the wood chipper, they become a very renewable source of mulch for my young trees and shrubs. This is the first year doing that, so I'm not sure how quickly they will break down, but I see no down side. I may also mix these chipped stalks with regular woodchip mulch to try and speed up the decomposition cycle of those (adding a green nitrogen source to the brown woodchips). Maybe the allelopathic properties also extend to the stalks, and will help make woodchip mulch even more effective at keeping weeds down, we'll see.
$10.00 is a donation. $1,000 is an investment, $1,000,000 is a purchase.
With appropriate microbes, minerals and organic matter, there is no need for pesticides or herbicides.
Faye Streiff wrote:Another advantage to sunchokes is that the tops are excellent fodder for grazing animals. Alfalfa is just too expensive here and I sometimes feed the Sunchoke tops to the goats as a good source of protein.
Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil
Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Yesterday I dug a bushel of sunroots. Used some of them to start a batch of sauerkraut. I really, really liked digging the plant that had super-short stolons. All the tubers were right next to the stalk, so it made digging really easy. I expanded my patch by planting more of that variety...
Sandra Graham wrote:My tubers rarely seem to be near the plant, and this is true for all the varieties I grow. I think the tubers must be deep underground because I can dig a whole area over and find few or no tubers, even though it was teeming with medium to huge sun root plants. I know the tubers are there somewhere because the plants will spring up again thickly the next season. It’s incredibly frustrating and I haven’t heard anyone else mention this problem.
Jonathan Hodges wrote:
Sandra Graham wrote:My tubers rarely seem to be near the plant, and this is true for all the varieties I grow. I think the tubers must be deep underground because I can dig a whole area over and find few or no tubers, even though it was teeming with medium to huge sun root plants. I know the tubers are there somewhere because the plants will spring up again thickly the next season. It’s incredibly frustrating and I haven’t heard anyone else mention this problem.
Have you tried gently loosening the soil around the plant then pulling the entire stalk out of the ground? Even if some of the tubers break away from the root stolons, you'll be able to see where they were leading as you pull, helping you to find the tubers.
Sandra Graham wrote:
Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Yesterday I dug a bushel of sunroots. Used some of them to start a batch of sauerkraut. I really, really liked digging the plant that had super-short stolons. All the tubers were right next to the stalk, so it made digging really easy. I expanded my patch by planting more of that variety...
My tubers rarely seem to be near the plant, and this is true for all the varieties I grow. I think the tubers must be deep underground because I can dig a whole area over and find few or no tubers, even though it was teeming with medium to huge sun root plants. I know the tubers are there somewhere because the plants will spring up again thickly the next season. It’s incredibly frustrating and I haven’t heard anyone else mention this problem.
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