This mild fall was made for gardeners. I started planting all of my garlic and shallots wearing a sweatshirt. After digging two or three trenches, I peeled off the extra layer and worked in a T-shirt. This past week, we had a few nights of frost to sweeten the Jerusalem artichokes, then a gloriously sunny day to harvest the knobby tubers.
First, though, I had to pull out and stack the dried, brown flower stalks, taller than I am, and pitch them into the brush pile. Jerusalem artichokes, aka Helianthus tuberosus, is one of our native (eastern North America) sunflowers and gives its first gift in late summer with cheery yellow flowers tickling the blue sky.
Then I used my garden spade to turn over the soil, circling the patch of Jerusalem artichokes. I got down on my hands and knees and crumbled the soil between my fingers, digging deeper until I spotted a glimmer of red. I was searching for Jerusalem artichokes but also hit an unexpected buried treasure—smooth, round red potatoes. I knew I had planted them somewhere…
A lot of people don’t like to plant Jerusalem artichokes in the garden for the same reason they don’t like to plant bamboo—the plants are thugs that take over an area and crowd out their neighbors. You can get around that conquering nature by planting them in a container or by situating them at the edge of a lawn where weekly mowing tames them. I planted mine at the lawn’s edge and at the end of the vegetable garden path, thinking I was safe. They did jump into (or under) a raised bed where I planted potatoes in the spring.
I’ve never liked the term “food security”. It sounds too political, too governmental. To me, food (and gardening for food) is a joyous adventure. But I must admit, as a child of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cold War, when I planted my current crop of Jerusalem artichokes in the back of my mind was the thought that if we had a natural or manmade disaster I could feed my mother Jerusalem artichokes for quite a while (especially if we had a jug of maple syrup. She likes maple syrup on everything.). The tubers also give me peace of mind when it comes to my kids. They live in Belgium but know where to find aardperen (literally earth pears in Dutch). I blame this state of mind on my upbringing. In school, our teachers had us practice ducking under our desks should an alarm sound. When we went to the Glennland Building pool for swim team practice, we passed a yellow and black Fallout Shelter sign.
Enough of those thoughts. I spent a rainy day joyously pickling slices of Jerusalem artichokes, using the recipe from Nov. 23, 2014, Fleur-de-Pickled blog. (Did you know you can type in a word or two in the Search Box on my blog and find a topic or story from the past?) I made two changes to this basic recipe. First, I soaked the slices of JAs in cold water with the juice of a lemon (to keep the flesh from turning brown). Then, I added a tablespoon of turmeric to the pickling mixture, because I add turmeric to everything these days, which turned the JAs golden. Waste of a lemon? Who knows? At least the slices are pure golden, not mottled with brown. Laurie Lynch
Written on Slate:
In seed-time, learn
In harvest, teach
In winter, enjoy. –John Burroughs
More Chanticleer Photos:
A two-story greenhouse at Chanticleer gives a visual definition to the term “indeterminate” tomato.
This paper wasp nest look-alike is actually a plant list container for Bell’s Woodland.
Containers at Chanticleer are a lush mural of texture, shapes, form, and color.
This thorny mystery plant’s colors match those of the tiles behind.
Working for a roofing company, I occasionally get calls from people who ask how to get rid of moss growing on their rooftops. If only I could show them the beauty of Chanticleer’s moss house roof.
Fleur-de-Blog 