Couldn’t be much easier than this to grow your own wild carbohydrate-rich food! Growing Jerusalem artichoke is as easy as planting the tubers in a location you’d like to have these plants grow for a long time. Then let them grow, enjoy the beautiful sunflower-like blooms, and harvest the highly multiplied tubers in late fall and early spring.
These are both great, highly productive varieties:
Stampede – these are more of a natural tuber shape, longer and thinner. Large tubers.
White – these are a very thick tuber with a white interior. Very large and productive.
Note: all varieties have yellow flowers. The variety names loosely describe qualities of the edible tubers.
Growth Parameters:
Expect thin sunflower like stems 10 to 12 feet tall. Patch size depends on how many tubers you plant.
CAUTION: Sunchokes are one of the more powerful plants commonly planted by permaculturalists etc. The tubers spread by underground root runners, as well as by rodents who dig up the tubers and leave them half eaten in other locations. For planting, I often recommend an area that can be mowed around 360 degrees and far away from annual beds to be able to control the spread of the plants if necessary.