The plant is not from Jerusalem and they’re not an Artichoke (though, interestingly, both are related to Daisies). This perennial root vegetable is from Native America – from Canada over to North Dakota and down to Texas – and they’re in the Sunflower genus! Folks aren’t entirely sure where the common name comes from, though possibly the Puritans christened them because they grew prolifically in their so-called New Jerusalem. The nutty earthy flavor reminded a French explorer of Artichoke, so the name stuck. They’ve gone by a few other names in their time, including Earth Apple and Topinambur in parts of Europe when members of the Tupinambá tribe from Brazil visited the Vatican and royal courts - amazed that people submitted to such arbitrary authorities and shocked that the poor weren’t burning down the homes of the rich -.at the same time the tuber made their European debut. Since the 1960s, they’re often called Sunchoke as something of a marketing tactic to entice people put off by artichokes. We suppose that sounds more appealing, though not as humorously catchy, as another common name, fartichoke, derived from the tubers habit to cause exactly what the name states.

Indigenous North Americans have been cultivating Jerusalem Artichoke as a root vegetable since long before colonization. The tubers are rich in potassium, iron, fiber, niacin, and phosphorus, with 2% protein and little starch. Instead, they contain inulin, which makes a lot of people gassy but converts into fructose when the tubers are stored for a while. As such, they help control blood sugar levels when eaten regularly, an important dietary consideration for folks with diabetes. They also help metabolize fat faster. Big tubers lose moisture quickly, so leave them in the living root cellar of the ground or a cool moist place until you’re ready to eat them. They get sweeter in the ground with winter frosts and are delicious grated on salads. Otherwise, try frying them, pickling them like turnips, or roasting them like a potato, for which they’ve often been used as a substitute, or adding them to soups as a sweetener. In 2002 the Nice Festival for the Heritage of French Cuisine championed Jerusalem Artichoke as the “Best Soup Vegetable.” Might as well try them out! They were a regular part of French diets during Nazi occupation, when the plentiful tubers supplemented limited food rations.

We plant Jerusalem Artichoke in big patches on sunny borders or where we want to shade out grass. We plant it almost anywhere as long as we can see those gorgeous sunny flowers! We’ve also tried planting them along the streambank to control erosion, though we don’t plan on harvesting those tubers for food. We do, however, plan on harvesting other patches. It’s an easy plant to grow in climates where corn grows too. Each root can make 75 to 200 more tubers, a square yard can produce several pounds, and an acre can grow between 7-9 tons of tubers, and even more biomass, which is why some researchers consider it for a biofuel crop. Jerusalem Artichoke has an incredible amount of green growth each year, good for mulching, animal bedding, and adding to compost piles in Autumn. If you don’t plan on eating the tubers, just grow Jerusalem Artichoke for the astounding biomass or as forage for pigs!

We grow two varieties:

Yellow: a name we gave to an unnamed variety that grows 8-9 feet with bright yellow flowers and abundant lumpy white-toned tubers that we propagated from friends’ farm.

Stampede: a cold-hardy cultivar growing up to 12 feet tall, bred to have larger tubers (weighing almost half a pound) that form and flower earlier than many other varieties because they’re day neutral, meaning they can flower whether or not they get lots of daylight, making them pretty desirable for short summer climates. According to a 1980 article, this cultivar was “discovered”  on an Indian reservation in northern Ontario where Indigenous breeders were replanting “only the earliest-flowering varieties until they had speeded up flower development by a full month.”  

We propagate our Jerusalem Artichoke from tubers in our backyard and streamside patches.