How to play along at home, part 4 - Jerusalem Artichokes

The last bag of Swift potatoes is mocking me.

There are absolutely no signs of greenery at all, which is strikingly unlikely considering how much growth every other potato has already. I would normally put this kind of a no-show down to bad seed, but this bag has three seed potatoes in it and the odds are astronomical that all of them are duds. They just hate me. The feeling's mutual.

To compound the depressing potato-related news, it turns out that the Purple Majesty purple-black leaves, that I was so excited about the other day, are only temporary. They turn boring green like any other potato once the leaves get past a certain size.

I expect vibrant purplecy out of the potatoes themselves to make up for this disappointment.

The good news this week comes from a different type of tuber. Last year, I planted jerusalem artichokes for the first time with more than a little trepidation. All root vegetables are a little nerve-wracking because you can't actually see whether all your hard work is going anywhere. They could, to pick a random example, grow a 3ft tall leafy top while failing to grow anything at all under the surface.

To compound the all-purpose root veg anxiety, I had no idea what to expect from these except a few descriptions in books, which said that the top big resembled a sunflower with a big, wide, open, colourful, pretty flower at the top.

Pretty

Needless to say, I didn't hold out much hope for the actual eatey-part, but I was pleasantly surprised by a bumper harvest.

Maybe a tenth of our harvest. Scale is a little hard to tell in that photo - that's about five/six portions there, assuming you're using them instead of potatoes.

These were ridiculously easy and gave so much bang for my buck that I'm recommending that anyone who is growing any veg in their garden should give them a try.

How to grow:
Find artichoke from somewhere, stick in ground from Feb-April, ignore until November, dig up when hungry.

They don't particularly need watering, pruning or anything clever, although you may want to use stakes or string to support the stalks if they get too tall. The ground can be the worst bit of your garden if you like - my dad grew some last year in what was basically an alleyway down the side of their house and they grew superbly. They grow ridiculously tall, up to 7ft high, so light is rarely going to be a problem for them. And unlike a lot of root crops, they'll grow in stony, sandy soil and do very well.

They also require so little space as all the growth is up and down - you could almost certainly plant a shallow-rooted vegetable like bush-beans or even broccoli underneath them to make full use of your garden. I'm underplanting mine with nasturtiums this year.

The only downside of them is that they will come back next year - grow them once, grow them forever. Mine are being grown in canvas bags above the ground so I have the option to move them if I wish.

Tips of the new artichokes at the back, a nasturtium going for it front left and a really annoying weed front right that I didn't notice when I took this photo but it now annoying the crap out of me to the extent that I considered photoshopping it out before realising that that might be just a little bit insane.

This picture above shows a 1m long bag that cost me a fiver from Amazon - I expect to get three or four plants in there which will provide enough for 5-7 meals for both me and my wife.

Are they tasty?

Jerusalem artichokes can be used in place of potatoes in most recipes, but taste sweeter and nuttier - like a cross between a parsnip, potato and really nice sweet potato. They have the advantages of being really good for you, low in calories, and require very little preparation - no peeling or scraping, just wash and slice.

They store for ages; you can either leave them in the ground and dig them up as you need them (till about February, then they'll try making new plants instead of being edible) or freeze them after slicing and blanching for another 4 months after that.

The best way of cooking them is to slice into large circles and then deep-fat-fry or sautee them. The outsides crunch and the insides are fluffy, soft and melt in your mouth, with so much more depth of taste than an ordinary chip. You can also boil, steam and mash them, as well as use them to make very tasty soups. In short, the answer to the bolded question is yes. Very yes.

Sliced and ready to be dumped in the deep-fat-fryer. You may not have noticed this photo first time around. That's clearly because you didn't read the blog properly and not because I've just found it and inserted it into an old entry, George Lucas-style. It's okay though; I forgive you for not paying enough attention to something that I care about. I'm not hurt at all.

{sob}

They are a superb crop for me because they are low-maintenance, very low-square-metreage and super tasty. Plus they cost an absolute bomb to buy in the supermarket. That pile in the top picture would cost about £15 in Sainsburys. So they even give a touch of verisimilitude to my delusion that I'm saving money by vegetable gardening - is there anything that they can't do?

All things told, grow them - they're great.

PJW

Look ma, I'm instagramming!

I hate to be *that* guy, but... well, here are pictures of three meals that I've had this week.

So far, we've had three meals worth of new potatoes, mange tout, nasturtia flowers, some broad beans, spinach and most importantly, carrots that can actually be peeled without halving in weight. We're not quite up and running full-time yet - the portions of vegetables have been minimalistic and the garden is now stripped bare until the next batch matures - but it's the sign of things to come.

I am now planning ahead and replanting for the next lot of food. November to January will require a bit of planning ahead - some of it is going to be winter crops like kale, spinach, chard, leeks and sprouts and some of it is going to be stored vegetables like carrots and potatoes.

Proud as I am of my humungous carrots, I don't think there's going to be too many spares to store if I don't work out how to grow them bigger, so I'm trying a new experiment.

This one comes from the top google result on "growing bigger carrots" and is an allotment diary of someone trying to grow carrots for exhibition for the first time. The idea is that, instead of growing in soil, you fill a box with sand for spacing and drainage, bore holes in it and fill the holes with a special mix of carrot-dirt. It worked for him in that he got some seriously scary carrots out of it, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I'm obviously starting later in the year than the gent on the website, but then again I don't plan on growing carrots big enough to use as truncheons, so I think I should be fine. I bought a big 50 litre tub, filled it with sand and then bored 16 holes using a bit of drainpipe.

I then made up a soil mix for the carrots to grow in. Carrots apparently like loose non-lumpy soil to grow in, so I started by taking some used potato compost and sieving out all of the lumps, twigs, and other bumpy bits. I then added a reasonable amount of bonemeal and some high potassium fertiliser, as these would help replenish what the potatoes had taken and then some. I then sieved in some top soil and some fresh compost before mixing the whole lot in a bucket with some vermiculite (a mineral that aerates the soil and keeps it loose, as well as absorbing water well). In theory, this should be carrot manna. We'll see.

Used a funnel to pour in the mix and letting the whole lot settle down for a day or two before putting the seeds in. I'm planning on having several options to keep myself entertained - orange, red and purple. The amount I've spent on this getup vs the price of a carrot in a supermarket means that I at least need to get interesting colours out of the deal.

Still, if all of them grow to a good size, that'll be 8 meals worth for me, the wife and the youngster, which'll do very nicely indeed. And I guess I can always get another 50l tub or two...

PJW