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Re: artichokes

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

On 06:31 AM 2/28/99 -0600, Martha Wells wrote:
>Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html
>
>Long before my e-mail days I had a penpal who lived in CA and kept 
>artichokes growing in his garden. I can't remember what he did but his 
>plants were huge so I suspect he overwintered them. Aren't artichokes a 
>member of the thistle family?
>Pardon my dumbness but do you get more than one choke per plant (like 
>brussels sprouts) or does it crown like a pineapple?

I live in artichoke country!  Artichokes grow all along the coast in this
part of California, from Half Moon Bay to Carmel, with the "center" being
at Castroville.  Artichokes are my father's favorite food!  I grew up
eating chokes for dinner several times a week.  We never grew them, we just
obtained the culls from a nearby field (Odello Artichokes, grown along Hwy
1 next to the Carmel river), for free.

Artichoke plants have a main, central stalk that will be topped with the
largest bud.  Along the side of the stem will be lateral shoots that will
have smaller buds, but just as tasty.  People who know and love artichokes
eschew the large "display" type chokes (because you waste so much of the
choke with because of the tough outer leaves and the inedible thistle in
the center) and prefer the smaller ones that are the size of a large goose
egg, where you can eat most of the outer leaves, ALL of the inner leaves
and there is no inedible thistle in the center, see the side bud pictured at:

http://www.artichoke-festival.org/ 

A photo on the above page shows a growing plant with a large central bud
and a smaller side bud together on the plant, there is also has another bud
that is barely visible through the leaves on the right side of the picture
(a mate to the smaller bud you can see on the left side).  There will be
other smaller buds from bloom spikes radiating out from the main stem that
are lower on the plant and will produce smaller chokes.  See the picture
link below for more pictures.

Roadside artichoke stands have chokes in a wide range of sizes, from as big
as a small iceberg lettuce head (larger than a softball) down to small than
a small hen's egg.  The littlest buds often go for as cheap as 40 to the
dollar where the biggest ones may be a buck or more each (depending on the
season).  Obviously, they will cost even more at your local supermarket.

Here are some other web resources that artichoke lovers should look at:

http://www.artichokes.net/growing.htm
http://207.87.26.207/library/grow_guides/artichokes/artichokes.html

You can search for pictures of artichokes at Altavista:

http://image.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avncgi?query=artichoke&ophoto=1&ocolor=1&
oonepp=1&oshape=n&verb=n&lastpgcnt=0&do=3&pgno=2&imgid=-1

Trivia fact:  In 1948 a Hollywood star named Marilyn Monroe was the first
"Artichoke Queen" at the inaugural artichoke festival in Castroville.  The
event that put Castroville on the map...

jc


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