Please note that this post contains affiliate links of products that I love and use. This rewards me with a small commission if you choose to buy through the links and none of this will cost you anything – but it does help me pay the bills and deliver you quality content. – Love, Gloria.
Native to central North America, Jerusalem artichokes which are also called by their modern name sunchokes are such strong growers that they can become rather invasive if not handled properly. Of course, this is mostly the case in warmer climates, but by the rate, they spread on our first attempt at growing them I have no problem believing this. Here is my guide on growing and harvesting Jerusalem artichokes. We merely planted two tubers, and the harvest we got from these was huge. What you see in the picture below is just about a half of it. There was, in fact, a lot more in the soil but it was trapped under the compost bin and shall remain unharvested.
Frankly, we didn’t plan to harvest any at all; we just wanted to cover the compost bin during the summer months as strange as that might sound. We have a very small backyard, so the big compost bin is much nicer hidden away behind a wall of green leaves! We chose to try doing this with Jerusalem artichokes and yacon. We didn’t expect to harvest anything, but we sure did. We had food for days and enough to stack in the freezer for the following months. Happy Days!
So what is edible when it comes to this plant? The edible part of this plant are the roots which have a crisp texture. When cooked, they become soft and make a great nutty alternative to potatoes. They are also delicious when added to potatoes in the humble potato mash since they give it a nice depth of flavour and additional nutrients.
How Many Varieties are There?
Just like potatoes Jerusalem artichokes come in a variety of sizes colours and shapes. While we got our hands on the beige kind which falls into the “stampede” variety there many more colours available. They range from dark purple and pink to almost white in skin colour. They can appear in shapes of small onions or resemble stubby cucumbers.
When to Plant Jerusalem Artichokes?
While the leaves die down, they are still considered a hardy plant as their tubers remain dormant during winter and sprout again during late spring and early summer. They can withstand extreme frost, and some people leave them in the ground until they want to use them. For planting, you should choose the small, firm and most healthy looking tubers. Plant them in early spring to get Jerusalem artichokes with big roots which give them the longest growing season possible. I read in quite a few guides that any small tubers that you missed while harvesting will shoot up and supply you with a decent crop. I have yet to wait and see to confirm this, but I have to say I am excited about it.
Where to Plant Jerusalem Artichokes?
Jerusalem artichokes like well-drained soil, and while they are rather undemanding, you need to keep one thing in mind. They will grow large in height, much like sunflowers and will cast a considerable shade at anything close to them. Do not plant them right next to vegetables or flowers that don’t do well in the shade. The fact that they grow so tall also calls for staking and support in the latter part of the year. We had to tie ours to the fence to prevent them from falling over during windy weather.
You can see we planted them in a rather shady spot in the garden and they grew very tall. They only really got the sunshine once they outgrew the fence and compost bin. If you wonder which plant is the Jerusalem artichoke – it is the tallest plant shown to the left of the grown up in the picture below. You can see why it is also called sunchoke. It belongs to the same family as daisies and sunflowers. Look at the yellow flowers towering over everything!
How to Plant Jerusalem Artichokes?
As preparation all you need to do is dig out weeds and grasses. In our case we did not even remove the grass since we just wanted something to cover the compost bin. However if you plan to plant jerusalem artichokes for harvesting reasons you should follow these steps.
Plant the tubers 5-15cm (2-6 inches) deep and about 30-40 cm (12 -16 inches) apart. When the plants are about 30cm (1 foot) tall make sure to keep the soil moist but not too wet. We mulched ours with grass clippings to retain soil moisture. Stake and support the plant where needed – they grow huge!
How to Harvest Jerusalem Artichokes?
The jerusalem artichokes will be ready for harvest in about 4 – 5 months. If you want to maximise tuber production you should cut off flower stalks, that way the plant doesn’t waste energy on seed production. We let ours go to flower and it did not seem to hurt tuber production too much. Jerusalem artichokes are generally ready for harvest when the leaves die down. If you have the patience you might want to wait for the first frost as tubers harvested after they got hit by the first frost taste sweeter. In my experience the best harvest season is end of september until march.
We waited about 8 months from planting to harvest. Not because we wanted fancier tubers but merely because we did not expect to harvest anything at all. We were digging out of sheer curiosity once the dead plant was removed. Don’t be fooled by the still green, large leaves shown in the November picture below. Those are not jerusalem artichokes – they belong to the yacon which is another experiment we started at the same time.
To harvest them simply cut back the dead growth and lift the tubers with a digging fork. Some will break, but if you are careful, you should get most of them out without causing damage. They last longer and are easier to store when they are intact.
Most of the tubers will come up as a large cluster, and you will have to carefully split them. The rest will be in the ground, and you will have to individually pick them out. It’s done by turning over the soil and sifting loosely through it with your hands.
Now if you have your own experiences with growing and harvesting Jerusalem artichokes I’d love to hear about it. If you decide to give them a go this year let me know if you are successful. I love seeing pictures of other people’s gardens.
My sunchokes plant developed rust and I cut the stalks back.this was in August. I dug one up and the tubers had developed but they tasted blah…..no sweetness. If I leave them in the ground will they get sweeter?
The starch in the tubers develops as they stay in the ground so they will get sweeter. I also try to harvest them once the temperatures cool down. They seem to taste best after the first frost. In my experience the best harvest season is end of September until March. I live in southern England and the average temperature during winter is 0°C – 10°C – hope that helps. – Love, G.
Fabulous!
they’re so huge !
We tried at home the last summer and we harvest not the first summer’s end but at the second.
At first we plant 5 pounds of these and 2 years later we got for sure 10x more!
It is just a supposition cause we just harvested one row witch is 1/10 of the total= wow
it was just too much for too persons.
What i observe on your experience is your jerusalem artichoke are biggers than ours.
I think is cause you put it in a richer soil ? (just asside of the compost) and with green grass all around it witch probably provide azote who’s loved by jerusalem artichoke.
We plant it in a dryer ground and it had produced a lot, but smaller roots. And very good to eat for sure.
Finally i had to say that it is a perfect thing to grow and i will try to plant it under the grass to make a light fence in front of the yard and house ( and just to test if the grass help it to grow bigger).
🙂 thank you!
Ps: if you follow the facebook link below it will bring you to my 2016 garden and inside this album you’ll find some jerusalem artichoke pictures
Hello Jennifer. Thank you so much for your long comment. I loved reading it. They do grow huge! We just wanted to have something to fence the compost and we were just as surprised as you are. I think a combination of growing next to the compost and being next to the wooden fence helped them a lot. There was so much nutrition and while there was a lot of light and sun for half the day it also had some shade so the ground never fully dried out. We parboiled (cook half way) a lot of our crop and froze it when we harvested it the first time. Just cook them for about 5-7 minutes, let them cook and then freeze. That way you won’t waste any and you can add them to roasted veg and when boiling potatoes. Now we learned we can just keep them in the soil and take out what we will eat that week or day. I’ll head straight off to your page and have a look! – Love, G.
Hello once more. I just went onto your page and spammed it a bit with love and comments. What a gorgeous album, thank you so much for sharing it! I love how you grow your vegetables and still leave room for wildlife. I try to do the same but my garden is so tiny in comparison to yours. What a blessing it is to have such a huge space around the house. I am so happy for you. =D -Love, G.
We tried our luck with these on our balcony. They got huge! We grew them in large pots and there are so many of them. Just wanted to give you a heads up on that. They can grow in containers! AMAZING!
Great to know. Thank you! – Love, G.
Hello,
Just now at the end of April, I just harvested and dug up the Jerusalem Artichoke , unfortunately they began to shoot up. Is it still edible ? Friends told me that once they start to shoot up, it is toxic. Please let me know if I can still eat them. Thank you.
I tried to find information on that the past week and I could not find any. Once I ate some that had tiny shoots because I had stored them badly, I cut the shoots off and roasted them. I had no adverse reaction to them. However I would not like to make a general claim that it is safe since there seem to be people who think it is not. I will keep looking and let you know if I find a reliable source for this. – Love, G.
hi! I just came across this page while looking for information on how tall Jerusalem artichokes are supposed to get. We had a volunteer in our garden last summer. I didn’t even know what it was, because, even though we’ve had Jerusalem artichokes on our land for as long as I can remember, this plant was huge! I kept staking it up, knowing that it looked like some kind of a sunflower and I was waiting for it to bloom.
It ended up getting over 11 ft tall and I only found out what it actually was when I went to pull a plant up to compost it in the fall. I got more than 4 gallons of artichokes from that plant!
We got a greenhouse this spring and when volunteer plants came up I planted them on the south side of the greenhouse hoping that they would shade it from the sun this summer. The plants are now about 12 feet tall and still growing!
I Love the taste of the tubers sliced and fried in coconut oil, but they make me so gassy that I just can’t eat them and be around my husband without dying of embarrassment. I did a little research and found out that fermenting them helps to remove the gassiness, so I shredded a couple of gallons and made “sun kraut”, but it turned grey and ugly-looking where air touched it, plus the texture wasn’t great. This year I’ll try slicing and fermenting. I’ve also read that leaving them in the ground longer helps with gassiness.
Any suggestions that might help with this problem?
Try taking plant enzymes before you eat them to see if that helps. It helps me with onions, which do the same thing to me!
Robin, hope you see this two years later. Sunchokes are high in inulin. Inulin is extremely good for healthy bacteria in your gut microbiome. But, until you get a good population of healthy bacteria sunchokes can cause a lot of bloating and gas. The three things to do:
1. Eat more probiotic kind of foods to inoculate your gut with healthy bacteria. Sauerkraut (the kind in the refrigerator section that still has live culture in it) Kimchi, Tempeh, Miso, Kombucha, etc. are all good foods.
2. Start out with small amounts of chokes. Just add one or two to a stir fry or mashed potatoes. Then increase the amount as you get used to it.
3. You are already doing it, but yes, leaving the chokes in the ground for longer will reduce the amount of inulin and starches that can cause the gas.
yep- also shocked at how huge ours are. can you harvest before they flower?
1st attempt this year at gorwing jerusalum aritchokes! I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA. Had alot of variability from plant to plant. Some were 8 ft and some were 5 ft in mid september, just blosssing in last week. Could have been aphids, got rid of them. Now plants look great and am looking forward to harvesting in late Sept to early Oct. Have never seen them in grocery store and have never eaten them before.
We live in the benign Pacific Northwest, and our Jerusalem artichokes are 15′ tall…early October, they had finally started to bloom. When I harvest them stalks I cut off the tops and they stay pretty in vases for a long time. I’ve been peeling them and slicing them thinly, then sauteing in garlic and butter–fantastic! Haven’t tried them boiled yet. Looking forward to making a ginger/walnut/leek soup with them.
Using them as flowers in your house is a brilliant idea, why have I never thought of that! – Love, G.
I planted some last spring that a friend gave me and never harvested them. we’ve had several hard freezes this winter. I live in Oklahoma. can i still harvest them?
Hello Jennie, I just saw your comment in the spam filter. Yes you can harvest them after frost. I once harvested mine in the late spring and they were still ok. Best is to harvest them after the first frost though. Love, G.
Is this plant a perennial?
Yes, it is a perennial. – Love, G.
Ugh! I ordered some jerusalem artichokes online (I think they grow wild out here in Arkansas but I was afraid, some plants mimick others and are poison here), and they were growing just fine…until last night when the deer cropped them down. Any advice on how to keep the deer off of ’em?
Any advice on how to keep the deer off my jerusalem artichokes?
Hello Charlet. I live in a very rural area with a lot of animals trying to get access to my vegetables. I have tried numerous liquids and repellents in the form of sprays and pellets. Same with home remedies ranging from citrus peels to other odd things but the only thing that has ever kept wildlife away from my fruits and vegetables is this: https://amzn.to/2JaBLhj It is a device that repels animals with sound, and it is solar powered so no need to replace batteries. It is the best thing I ever bought. I have three in total. One in front of the house that stops the neighbour’s cat from pooping onto my flowers and two for the vegetables in the backyard. I can highly recommend it. – Love, G.
Thank you! I’ll look into it.
Hi! Can you replant a shoot to get a new plant or does it have to be an actual tuber?
Hello Billie, it has to be the actual tubers, but they spread quickly so even if you only have a couple you will be able to have a decent harvest the first year. – Love, G.
Hi Gloria,
I beg to differ on the question of whether full tubers are required to start new plants. They are like potatoes in that they apparently will start from the “eyes”. I turn the smaller tubers but mostly the peelings back into the ground immediately after digging and preparing them for our Canadian Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners. From the number of stalks that return the next spring every piece seems to sprout. And they are often dug and crudely turned back into the ground when their is hard frost and/or snow. Doesn’t seem to phase them in the least. My favourite vegetable by far! At least the fourth generation in our family look forward to these treats for those holiday dinners.
Hello Scott, thank you for writing this down. It always failed for me for whatever reason while I lived in England. Two years ago I moved to the Netherlands so I will try it in the soil here. Might make a difference and if it works I’ll make a second post.. – Love, G.
My aunt gave me a tuber and told me it was ginger.I planted it believing that I was planting ginger,and let them grow for a couple of years.I pulled one up last year to use in a recipe.When I cut it I did not smell ginger at all!So not knowing what they were I started to pull them up and throwing them away.A friend saw them laying on the ground just after I put most of them min the trash and suggested that they might be jerusalem artichokes,so I found your site and took a look!I am pretty sure that what I am seeing on your site is what is growing by my garage.Thanks for the help,
I love how easy it is to grow Jerusalem artichokes and that they come back every year. I call these my two-for plant because I use the flowers for table arrangements and I eat the tubers. After most flowers are spent, these make beautiful yellow flowers. I’m going to try substituting these for white potatoes. Potatoes are in the night shade family and cause joint pain in some people.
Hi. Your chokes got big because they fed off the compost bin, and also why you got so many. I grew them and
didn’t get anywhere near your harvest or size. Honestly!
My Lab and I loved them, but no one else did. So small they were hard to peel, but that didn’t bother the dog.
Barbara Ripley
today I’m in a mobile home park, and it’s not allowed to grow Jerusalem artichokes.
Hi
I have only just got around to thinking about harvesting my jerusalem artichokes and not surprisingly most of them have started to sprout. Is it still Ok to eat them if they are sprouting?
Thanks – look forward to your reply.
Rosie
Northern England
Hi Gloria
I wanted to share a fabulous recipe my chief friend cooked for a gestation night last year. I was looking up when to harvest my Jerusalem artichokes that’s when I found your page. Mine are 4 or more metres high & dying back but now I will have to wait for the first frost shame because I can’t wait to make this soup,
He made this for 10 people so either freeze it or scale back the recipe.
1 & half kilos of Jerusalem artichokes peeled & cut
1 kilo Turnips peeled & cut
2 large onions peeled & cut small
3 large cloves of garlic chopped or minced
3 litres of vegetable stock or ( chicken stock for non vegans )
Biol till all soft then put in blender till smooth.
Whip thickened cream or ( whip coconut cream pour in a bowl put in fridge 30 minutes or more to seperate skim cream off top then whip or use silken tofu with rice,oat or soy milk )
With salt & pepper & white truffle oil
Spoon the creamy mixture on top of soup.
Lisa
This is the most amazing soup I have ever tasted
Hello Lisa. Thank you so much for the recipe. Summer is just around the corner, and despite loving the warmer months, I can’t wait for the frost to hit now, because I’m looking forward to trying this soup. It sounds delicious. Enjoy your weekend! – Love, Gloria.
ooh I am going to try this Lisa. We don’t really haver turnips much here in New Zealand. I might try with potatoes or parsnips instead.
ooh thanks for this recipe, it looks good and I will try it!
A FRIEND GAVE ME SOME BUT SHE CALLED THEM “DAMN DAISIES”
THEY SPREAD LIKE CRAZY – VERY INVASIVE BUT NOW I CAN LOOK AT THEM AND VISULIZE A FOOD PRODUCT!
Hi we bought a pkt of what we thought were mexican vegetable , to try it once, but what we got was Jerusalem artichokes, but at the time we didn’t know . Planted up in a pot growing bag, and when the plant died back we harvested ,we got the most tasty veg this side of Catman do, all contained together, we shall be planting again next year.Took pictures but no where here to show
Thanks so much for this information. I am in Auckland New Zealand – (NZ,) where summer is just about over. I am growing my first ever sunchokes from 2 x tubers, planted in early spring. (September) The plants are vigourous and very tall, lovely yellow flowers peering into our kitchen! Once they have died back I will atrempt my first ever “dig” and hopefully have some jerusalem artichokes to cook with. I have heard that they just need washing, and don’t need peeling? Do you have a favourite way to eat them? i will definitely try them with mashed potatoes as you have suggested. 🙂 Thanks and best wishes from New Zealand!!
It’s early spring here in Maine…I have never harvested any, so I have a bunch! Can I harvest them now ,early April? If not what can I do with all the little buggrts?
I have been growing Jerusalem artichokes for 40 odd years now. I NEVER peel them just give them a good scrub. I tried peeling once and it was so much hassle and to my mind they didn’t taste half as good, the skins are so good for you too. I like them with a white sauce as a vegetable also turkey and artichoke soup after Christmas is a firm favourite. Sadly they don’t store so well but if they dry up you can soak them in water and they will swell up again
Thanks for posting. I’m going to be trying sunchokes this year. My question is about the seeds. Do they have seeds like a regular sunflower does that can be eaten or fed to chickens and ducks?
Barbara
Hello Barbara, the flowers are not as big as actual sunflowers, so the name is misleading in a way. If you look at them, they resemble dahlias. The seeds are present but so small that you can not harvest them the way you can harvest sunflower seeds. I will actually make a note in my calendar and add some better close up pictures of the flowers so future readers can see them. Best of luck with your sunchokes and enjoy the flowers, which may be a bit “useless”, but they are beautiful nonetheless. – Love, G.
Thanks!