Artichoke Plants (Green Globe) 2007 http://artichoke.notlong.com/ April 2007. Artichoke Plants ( Green Globe) started 8 March 2007 under lights and on a heating mat. This is my first year with this plant. The seeds were placed in a fibre pot surrounded with soil and put in a plastic pot. The fibre pot inside keeps the roots contained, and facilitates transplanting when the time arrives. http://gaeso.notlong.com/ 25 August 2007. One plant has produced a edible fruiting body. There are three plants and they are in full vigorous growth in Zone 5. http://ievar.notlong.com/ 6 October 2007. Some fruiting bodies allowed to flower/ http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MV011 Information about the Artichoke.
http://eajoh.notlong.com/ 13 October 2007. Description and some flowers in full bloom. The Globe Artichoke is a perennial in some areas. I will leave these three plants in the ground with some ground protection to see if they will over-winter in my Zone 5.
The two potted artichoke plants I bought last year did produce, but the artichokes were tough and took forever to cook. I finally gave up last summer and just cut away all the leaves on the chokes and canned the hearts to eat that I harvested from my two producing artichokes. By the way, we live in the high desert in Arizona where our temperatures in the summertime get up into the 100's. This year I have already harvested artichokes and they were absolutely perfect. I'm thinking that by the time I harvested artichokes last year it was late summer and maybe it was too dry here for them in the desert. But this year I harvested in the Spring and it has been cooler this year so I am ready to harvest at least a dozen more artichokes from my plants. Last year I also bought a packet of Globe artichoke seed and planted them directly into the soil in my garden during the summer. I now have 4 seedlings that are producing edible artichokes plus the two plants I bought last year. I even gave away 3 of the seedlings to my neighbors. Anyway, all of the plants are beautiful and the artichokes are delicious. The plants survived a very cold winter--we had temperatures every night that went down into the 20's for at least 2 months. I never covered them nor even cut them back and they wilted very badly. All recovered nicely in the spring after I trimmed away the dead leaves and the plants are bountiful and beautiful again. I probably should have cut then back and covered them with straw or mulch but it turned out okay this past winter. One more thing, in the later summer, I will let the artichokes go to "flower" and will sell those at our local farmer's market as "ornamentals"....yes, people do buy those!!!!!
