Artichoke
Artichoke
They aren't related, they don't taste the same, they don't come from the same part of the world, they don't grow in the same way, they aren't even the same part of the plant! The fact that they are both named as artichoke is because the Westerner who "discovered" jerusalem artichokes for the first time had a clear problem with his tastebuds and thought it tasted like globe artichokes. No-one else has ever agreed with this man.
Since my wife is a terrible influence on me, I decided that I'd try and grow a globe artichoke as well. It's not exactly a practical vegetable, but it seemed quite fun and my wife forced me to do it. I was told that they were well nigh impossible to grow from seed and, being of a contrary mind, I decided that I was going to try and beat the odds. Ten seeds sown resulted in one viable seedling, which flourished in the late sunshine last year and built up enough size to survive the winter freezes intact, before reacting to the spring sunshine with a sudden and abrupt death.
This was rather upsetting for a couple of reasons - I was obviously expecting a first and very satisfying crop this year, and secondly, I had already underplanted my expected artichoke plant with a third, also completely unrelated, vegetable called an artichoke.
Artichoke
The globe artichoke plant is big and leafy and requires a lot of space, but it grows mostly up, leaving a lot of ground space uncovered. It's perfect to plant chinese artichokes under the shade of the leaves, as the tubers will grow in the space just above the globe artichoke's roots. However, if you've planted the chinese artichokes and then the globe artichoke ups and dies on you, then you'll just end up with the chinese artichokes taking over the entire bed and leaving no room for any future globe artichoke plantings.
Since I didn't have time to try growing another globe from seed, I decided to go to the local garden centre to buy a ready-grown young plant. My only option was this:
There are nine plants in there. Nine! A globe artichoke plant needs a bare minimum of 0.5m2 growing space and they prefer having 1m2! Who needs *nine*!?
To make this even better, they were squeezed in so tightly that the roots were all intermingled, meaning that it was impossible to remove one without seriously damaging another. I managed to separate out five plants and pot them up without too much damage and have just composted the other four. I think I would've actually just paid the same price for a pot that contained one undamaged plant as I just have for nine plants that have spent the last few weeks trying to destroy each other for precious soil-space.
Anyway, I now own five slightly damaged globe artichokes and I'm just praying that one of them will survive for long enough to be planted in my double-artichoke bed.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, I thought I'd also show you the results of my sweetcorn growing:
I'll give you a hint at what the problem is - there's sixteen seed-tray slots and only two seedlings.
This is a major problem because of the way sweetcorn works - you have to grow lots of them in close proximity to each other so that they can pollinate each other. Two is not enough. Plus I can't just go and buy seedlings from the garden centre, as these are a special variety that produces red sweetcorn and if I mix standard yellow sweetcorn in with them, then they'll cross-pollinate and I'll get something nowhere near as cool that might not taste very nice.
I'm torn between buying new seeds and giving these ones more time to germinate. If I give these more time, then I might lose my opportunity to plant new seeds in time for them to catch up (and grow big enough to be part of this year's Three Sisters) and I could end up with no sweetcorn at all, red or otherwise. On the other hand, buying more seeds is pretty much a guarantee to Murphy's law that all of them will grow and I will end up with more sweetcorn seedlings than I know what to do with.
Thoughts from the balcony? Plus anyone want to take globe artichokes off my hands?
PJW
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