By Jasmine Shi
Sign up to join a guided work party here! No experience necessary and all are welcome.
There are some sunchokes growing bountifully on our pollinator border without us having planted them! They are not exactly desirable on the pollinator bed, so today, one of our big operations was to dig up the roots and remove these sunchoke plants.
Sunchoke roots (silveroak.com)
Sunchoke is a plant that is traditionally grown for food. Sunchoke is related to the sunflower and it tastes like artichoke, hence its name: sun-choke. Its bulbous roots are what we harvest and eat. Harvesting sunchokes is similar to harvesting potatoes: we dig underground and try to look for the bulbs, although we will often miss some and they will likely sprout again the next year. This is why once you plant sunchokes, you will never get rid of them in that area!!
Alex digging up the sunchoke roots
Despite this, we were grateful that we could take some sunchokes home for food! It’s definitely not something we could buy easily at the supermarket. Apparently it is also used in Chinese medicine.
After scrubbing them very well, they can be chopped and sauteed in butter as a vegetable or added to a stir-fry. Or, our favourite — make into a delicious soup with potatoes, onions, garlic and a little celery. Cauliflower also goes well in this soup.
Today’s harvest, along with Linda scrubbing the dug-up sunchoke roots to remove the dirt.
Another exciting thing from today was that our figs are finally ripe! They are big, light green, and squishy to the touch. This is our first time harvesting figs this year from the garden. Figs tend to have two harvesting periods per year, once in the summer and once in fall. However, due to the funny weather patterns this year, we weren’t able to have a summer harvest. We are definitely lucky to have a fall harvest!
A ripe fig
