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Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Artichokes
Cooking Notes
Artichokes are delicious raw or cooked. They can also be pickled or canned.
Before cooking, slice off the bottom of the stem and any tough outer leaves. Cut off about 1 inch of the spiky top of the artichoke.
Steam artichokes, don’t boil them. Steaming cooks them with just the right amount of moisture.
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How much do you cut them back in the summer? I live in zone 9b ( it's in the 100's now) and my plant is done producing and looking very ugly now.
Hi Stephanie, Artichoke is a perennial plant. Summer eat ends the harvest, toughens the edible parts and causes it to flower. Once the fruiting and harvest is done, cut back the plant (foliage and stems) to the soil level. You can either cover with mulch to initiate summer dormancy or allow the ornamental flower buds to form. Stop watering until early fall when the plant sends out new shoots in the fall. (You can stimulate a light crop in the fall by working compost into the soil around plants as growth resumes in cool weather.) If you wish, you can transplant new shoots into a new location in the garden or just leave them place to produce another year. Make sure you leave only the most vigorous shoot on the old plant for growth in the spring.
This year my artichokes are small and opening up completely too early.
Last year my artichokes were green. This year they are purple... the plant is healthy and the globes look healthy. Are they still okay?
Hi Cathy,
If the plant and globes look healthy they should still be fine. Depending on your growing conditions this winter, if temperatures dip to below freezing it can change the look of the artichokes to a brown or even purple color.
Why are ants all over my artichokes? They don’t seem to be eating them but there are a ton of ants on them!
The artichoke is a flower bud, so the ants could be looking for nectar to feast upon. They could also be looking for aphids, which produce a sweet substance called honeydew. Ants are known to “farm” aphids; they protect the aphids from predators (such as ladybugs) and eat the sweet honeydew that the aphids secrete.
I think I can get two crops from my plant, as the spring crop is already done. Do I cut the old done growth back, like I would in the fall?
Sure, if you live in the right climate (such as coastal areas of California) artichokes will produce buds throughout the entire year. For those who don’t get buds until summer, probably not. Prune the whole plant down by about a half, which usually stimulates rebudding.
Another way to keep cut artichokes is to cut part of the stem and place it in a bowl of water. I've done this with limp artichokes and the firm right up. I have a hard time deciding between cutting the artichokes off the plant or letting them become a beautiful flower. So pretty.