Anybody here grow Jerusalem Artichokes?

[hatrack]

I was wandering through a garden book, and they seemed like an interesting substitute for potatoes. Anybody with experience on growing them?

[BOSSHOG]

1. My Dad grew them every

year on his farms in Arkansas and Missouri. Very tasty but the plant takes up a lot of space, is a perennial and will come back year after year. The Choke is very versatile cooking wise or you can eat them raw. My StepMom used to slice them thin and they were great for dipping; had a very zippy zesty almost hot taste to them.

[noamnety]

2. I am all set to grow them

got myself a half barrel to sink into the ground so it has a barrier (the other half is for some horseradish). And now I can't find a grocery store that's stocking them! I even went to whole foods - where I got a couple organic sweet potatoes to plant. But I couldn't find them there, and the guy I asked for help kept trying to sell me a regular artichoke.

I've never grown tubers before, but this year I'm trying yellow potatoes, sweet potatoes, yacon (which might also interest you - I had to order that online), and if I can find the jerusalem artichokes locally, I was planning to try them as well. I've also got a damp bag of peat with a bit of ginger and a bit of turmeric in it, just experimenting to see what happens there.

[elleng]

3. may cause

abundant 'air.' may be wrong.

[uppityperson]

4. I have a friend who grew them. He had 1 word of advice. Container them.

They come back and are not so easy to weed out as random potatoes are. Otherwise, they grew easily, spread, were fairly easy to grow but took some space. He said grow them in a big container, or put something down deep into the soil to keep them from spreading.