Gardening NorthEast OHIO

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This is dedicated to all those who are interested in gardening in the north eastern Ohio area. Typically those counties that include area of Cleveland as well as north an... More

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Blaine Clark

July 26, 2021 10:07 am

West central PA here, close enough to north east Ohio! Figured I'd try to stir things up a bit on here. I 'farm' on a 1 1/2 in-town lot, not a lot of room, but we have fun with it. I've got a patch o... View MoreWest central PA here, close enough to north east Ohio! Figured I'd try to stir things up a bit on here. I 'farm' on a 1 1/2 in-town lot, not a lot of room, but we have fun with it. I've got a patch of asparagus, rhubarb and horseradish, and three patches of Sunchokes mixed with field garlic. This property was an old farm homestead and my back yard is filled with small coal furnace clinkers. It was also well dosed with 'lawn treatment' when we moved in 18 years ago. The first summer I tilled a patch about 10' x 10' and found three worms. I backed off for a couple years before trying again so the 'treatment' could leach out. Around town I discovered many patches of Sunchokes, Jerusalem Artichokes, Helianthus Tuberosus. They're a north east north American native, related to the annual Sunflower, grow from 4' tall to over 12' tall with tubers that are anywhere from extremely knobby to carrot shaped and sized and smooth as carrots. Their skin color also varies from white/tan to rosy red. They seem to all have white flesh like potatoes, crisp and textured like water chestnuts with a flavor that's hard to describe, plus the flavor varies from variety to variety. I've gathered three varieties that I've amateurishly identified from online photos and descriptions. One is Stampede(?), a white/tan skinned very knobby tuber on short stolons about 8" long, they don't grow far from the crown and grow under a 5' - 7' top. Another is Fescue(?), a red skinned slightly knobby tuber that spreads up to 18" under a 6' - 8' top. These two taste similar with a sort of potatoey-sunflower seed flavor. Not bad at all. The third variety I've got is Fuseau(?). They're a white/tan skinned carrot sized and shaped tuber with a 4'(!) spread under a 12'(!) top. These ones have an obnoxiously strong turnipy-herbal taste. One root chunked into a whole pot of soup or stew is enough to flavor the whole pot. They also strong enough that cooking even a little bit like this will smell up the whole kitchen. These ones are not the best representatives of the Sunchoke family! I try to keep thee ones thinned down to about a dozen plants. BTW, these ones where gathered from along a woodlot near Stump Creek, a village just north of Punxsutawney, the home of THAT whistlepig, woodchuck, groundhog, varmint, whatever you want to call him! What do you do with Sunchokes? Well, they're also known as Fartichokes for good cause! They're packed with a soluble fiber called Inulin. That's Insulin without the 's'. This fiber isn't broken down or digested in the stomach or the small gut. It takes the natural gut bacteria in the large gut to break it down. This is where the flatulence -issue!- comes into play! With our diet high in sugar and preservatives, most all of us have an imbalance in our gut bacteria, they move up into the small gut throwing the entire gut chemistry way off. The bacteria, when in the small gut, incompletely digest the fiber, that causes gas, sometimes gut wrenching, nose twisting gas. The cure? Either get your gut's flora and fauna fixed or use at least one of four methods of converting the Inulin into Fructose. They can be slow cooked for hours, cooked with an acidic ingredient like vinegar or citric acid, fermented just like sauerkraut or in a Kimchi, or they can be frozen. We harvest maybe half of our patches in the fall and can them as pickles and relishes. They're gre-at! I prefer them to cukes. The canning then shelf storage with vinegar does an excellent job of converting the Inulin into Fructose, the rest of them we leave in the ground until early spring, after the long, hard winter freeze, then we harvest for eating raw, sliced thin into salads or just for snack nibbling, dried or fried into chips with herbs or pepper for an extra kick. I've ground dried chips into flour in a food processor. It's a heavy flour like Buckwheat. You have to mix it with other flours for a lighter texture and it has to be mixed with wheat for it to rise. It's gluten free. We've roasted, grilled, pan fried them as water chestnut replacements, hash browns and home fries. Hint!> If you want to freeze some 'choke hash browns, squeeze as much of the moisture out of the shreds as you can. They're full of water like cabbage. They freeze just fine, but when they thaw they make gallons of extra water! If you toss frozen 'choke hash browns right into a frying pan without getting rid of that water, they're kind of like frog's legs, they'll jump and sputter and splatter that water away - all over the stove top and you when you step close to stir. My favorite is boiled and mashed 50:50 with potatoes with some brine fermented garlic and butter. That is soo-oo good! We've even used some of the flour to make pizzas and then toss some fresh raw chips or dices on the pizzas to bake. YUM! I've made wine from tuber and flower broth. It's not a fruity wine of course. The tuber broth makes a stout wine. The flowers make a lighter wine. I use just broth, water, sugar and a small handful of raisins for natural yeast. I'll add that when you're simmering the flowers they smell like squash and taste a lot like squash when done. Every part of the plant is edible, even the stalks and leaves. They're hairy, but if you fry the leaves that texture is gone and they're so crisp they actually melt on your tongue. I use Olive oil and a touch of Thyme, otherwise they taste like Olive oil. When boiled the hairy texture vanishes after about 10 minutes of boiling. They can be used like grape leaves in Mediterranean dishes or tossed in a white bacon sauce like wilted lettuce, endive or dandelions. The broth off the boiled leaves tastes like squash. That makes an interesting tea and I might try a kombucha with it someday ... or not. Deer, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits, guinea pigs and groundhogs love the stalks and leaves too. Most of the above also love the tubers as do squirrels, voles, slugs and chickens. The stalks and leaves have a minute amount of raw coumadin and acetysalicylic acid - aspirin, not enough to affect mammals but it's enough that like the juglone that walnut trees generate, it's allelopathic which means it retards germination of competitors. After a couple years a patch of Sunchokes will kill most of the grasses in it's wake. Strawberries and field garlic aren't affected at all. Day lilies are affected some, they won't spread, but they won't die off in a 'choke patch.

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