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

I use the sunchoke/jerusalem artichoke as a supplemental food in my livestock feed cycle. The rabbits love them as they love turnips.

We had those growing along the fence last year here in the high desert.... they did great.

Dan Lewis wrote:I've heard they can be invasive. Anyone heard about that?

I have grown Sunroots for 7 years in my annual garden. I wouldn't call them invasive, because they don't move from place to place in the field. They pretty much stay where they are planted.

They can be persistent however! They reproduce from winter-hardy rhizomes. They are susceptible to culling just like any other weed. There is a sweet spot in the life cycle, when the plant has exhausted the energy in the old rhizome, but before it starts making new rhizomes... I think that's around the time that they are about a foot to two tall. So it's very possible to weed them out of a garden, it just takes persistence like with any other weed. It's especially effective to weed with a digging fork, and lift up the rhizome along with the plant that it's attached to.

Another strategy that I use, is to cultivate the sunroot weed patches in perpendicular rows... So I end up with a grid 5 feet by 2 feet with a sunroot plant or two on each grid intersection. It's easy to maintain the grid during the growing season.

I grew just a couple of tubers in a confined space three years ago and they rapidly spread to fill the entire 4 x 6 ft space. Then, they escaped from their confinement and under a fence into my neighbor's yard! We're both having trouble eliminating them.
I was so excited about growing a new staple food. But no matter how I cooked it: roasted, stewed, or in a soup, they gave me the worst stomach pain--- I felt like I swallowed knives! I would be careful about feeding sunchokes to your guests in any quantity (some might think that you're trying to kill them!!) I was hoping that there would be digestive enzymes on the market for inulin but I couldn't find any; Beano doesn't work on inulin. Wish I had a pig.

Has anyone ever tried pressing oil from Sunchoke seeds? Since it is related to the sunflower, I'm thinking it might have possible oil for extraction. I read that Native Americans used the perennial Maxmillian Sunflowers for oil, which have small seeds and look similar. I'm wondering if Sunchokes could be used for the same. I couldn't find any info in the Googleverse on this, wondering if anyone here has tried it or heard about it.

People have been telling me for years that sunroots are sterile and don't make seeds. So I just post photos of the seeds that mine produce... However, even though I call mine abundantly seeding, I mean that in relationship only to other sunroots, not in relation to sunflowers in general. From a 40 foot long row, I might collect 1/2 cup of seeds. So definitely not a crop that I would try growing for oil. The maximillian sunflowers have lots more flowers per plant than sunroots.

Maximilian sunflower and annual sunflower hybridize with sunroot if the sunflowers are the pollen donor. The hybrids are compatible with each other. So it aught to be possible to select for a strain of sunroot that produces lots of huge seeds, and lots of tubers. Some of us are working on this project. It takes time. We are basically creating a new species by purely natural means.

One of my sunroot plants this summer produced more seeds than all the rest of the patch combined.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annual%26perennial_sunflowerheads%26text.jpg

Joseph, how wonderful! A few more years and you ought to have it, and adapted to high desert as well!

Great information Joseph! That definitely doesn't sound like adequate seed/acre for any oil production at this juncture. Until your mega-seed sunchoke comes into the fold of course. Considering the maxmillian has so many more flowers, how much maxmillian seed could you pull off of that 40 ft row do you think? I'm looking for a low (no) maintenance perennial oil crop of some sort that can be grown in zone 4, and so far that's what I've come up with. I don't want to hijack the thread and turn it into an oil/maxmillan discussion, so I'll keep researching.

Ok, here is what I've found with sunchokes:
my family has grown them ever since I was small. They grow in clay soil on my parents' WV land, certainly no fertilizer, and pretty much no irrigation. They have formed a thick hedge on the north end of the garden, and are one of the few things not destroyed by deer and groundhogs.
Growing up, we always harvested them after the first freeze. We'd wait till a warm spell sometime in early winter, then start digging. They were quite tasty raw this way - pretty sweet, good in salads. BUT - they were never any good cooked. They were watery if you tried to roast them, with quite a sharp flavor. Pretty bleh.
This year, we had really warm weather up through Xmas. I had been reading about cooking them, and thought that maybe they would cook up better before a freeze - and so it turned out. I dug up a bunch. Raw, they were not sweet at all. But when I roasted them, they had a much more starchy texture, and were tasty. They got a bit sweeter in the roasting, and I made them mashed with good results. I also sliced them thinly, tossed them with a bit of oil and salt, and baked them into crisps. They did great. Finally, I sliced them thinly (used the mandolin attachment on the food processor) and laid them out in a single layer on clean cloths and set them behind the stove to dry out. Also worked well - a bit of a starchy texture, which bodes well for grinding them into flour.

If I were going to grow an oilseed crop, it would probably be some type of brassica: Bok choi, rapeseed, etc...

I haven't grown Maximilian sunflowers, so can't comment on their productivity.

Spread the love! Over the weekend, I provided two more families with sunchokes to plant.

Danny Smithers wrote:I'm looking for a low (no) maintenance perennial oil crop of some sort that can be grown in zone 4, and so far that's what I've come up with. I don't want to hijack the thread and turn it into an oil/maxmillan discussion, so I'll keep researching.

Hi Danny, there are a couple of new thread here for discussion of oil seed crops,
https://permies.com/t/53987/energycrops/Perennial-oil-seed-crops
https://permies.com/t/53986/energycrops/annuals-oil-seeds


Let us know what you find through your research!

It's so strange to me that everybody in the English-speaking world calls them "Jerusalem Artichoke" or "Sunchoke"...
In Germany, everyone refers to them as "Topinambur". As far as my research goes, this is the name of the native people who cultivated them on the east coast of south America (Tupi/Tupinamba).

They are called topinambours in french too.

Both of those names are mistaken attempts to understand where the plant came from. I don't think either one makes any sense. As you have seen, "sunchoke" is taking over, and perhaps "sunroot" will as well.
John S
PDX OR

Oh, but "earth pear" is so much more poetic and romantic, and sounds so much more like something a person would want to eat!
sigh, couldn't we call it that, and see if we could bring about a change in what the English speaking part of the world calls this funny root?

is there any reason these need to be peeled ?

No. Many people like myself prefer to buy and grow the ones with more regular, rounded roots. Then I use a vegetable brush to clean them. It's just a regular brush that I have dedicated to vegetables, so, for example, it doesn't have any chlorine based cleaners on it. I often have to break them apart to get at some of the dirt. I'm not anti-dirt obsessive. Mine are grown in good quality organic soil, so a little dirt is ok, especially since I mostly ferment them. In many fruits and vegetables, if they're grown organically, the peel is the most nutritious part.
john S
PDX OR

thank you
now that we are having some thaws I will dig some , still trying to find ways I like them. I am not really crazy about them roasted , in the next few weeks I think I will try adding some to slaw , and pickling some
I need to figure out how I like them or they will take over the front lawn !

Mike Turner,

If you are looking for a sunroot that is slower to spread, try White Dwarf, Dwarf Sunray, or Supercluster as they are smaller, less invasive plants than the average sunroot cultivar. You can find them at Oikos.

What is an Oikos?

A plant nursery in Michigan. Look it up.
John S
PDX OR

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Oh, but "earth pear" is so much more poetic and romantic

I can hear it already when I take sunroots to the farmer's market:

Visitor: What' are those?
Farmer: They're Earth Pears.
Visitor: Oh. I don't like pears.

Anyone knows which other plants grow well around them?
I just bought about 4kg (~9lbs) of sunchokes and I'm going to plant them like Joseph Lofthouse mentioned above, 0.5m (18in) apart and rows one lawn-mower width apart, and I'd like to fill up the space in-between them with some veggies.
I'm guessing I'll need something that grows well in the shade, as I see they produce quite a lot of leaves and stalks.

Any suggestions/past experiences?

I'm curious if some peas or beans might do well growing with/near them? like a three sisters type deal going. you would have to plant them after the chokes are up a bit to make sure they have something there ready to climb on.

kadence blevins wrote:I'm curious if some peas or beans might do well growing with/near them? like a three sisters type deal going. you would have to plant them after the chokes are up a bit to make sure they have something there ready to climb on.

I was thinking the same thing, but then again sunchokes have rhyzomes so that might take up other plants' root space...

Perhaps something that goes well with potatoes?