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Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Artichokes
The globe artichoke is a perennial in the thistle family that produces long, silver-green, lobed leaves that make the artichoke look like a giant fern. Learn how to plant and grow edible artichokes in your garden!
About Artichokes
The buds (i.e., the “artichokes” that we harvest and eat), if allowed to flower, are thistle-like and violet. These large plants can be grown in rows in the garden, as informal hedges, or planted as a wide border. Artichokes can reach heights of 3 to 5 feet.
Artichokes prefer cool, humid summers and mild winters. In cool regions, plan to treat the artichoke as an annual.
One plant will produce many artichokes. The biggest bud grows on the top of the plant, and many smaller ones grow beneath.
Growing
- Keep the soil moist. Artichokes need lots of water to form the edible buds.
- Mulch around the plants to keep the moisture in the soil.
- Apply a balanced organic fertilizer once every month during the growing season.
- Remove the mulch when the plants begin to bud and cover the soil around the plants with compost.
- Artichoke plants will go dormant in hot weather.
- When temperatures cool off in late summer and fall, the plants will start growing again and you may get a second harvest.
- In cooler regions, after the fall harvest, cut the plants back to about 6 inches and cover the crowns of the plant with leaves.
- For extra winter protection, add an additional foot of straw on top.
- Remove the straw and leaves after the last frost in the spring.
How to Propagate Artichokes
- Select shoots from an established plant that produced well the previous year.
- Remove shoots in the spring when they are about 8 inches high.
- Cut the shoot off below the soil, at the point where it is attached to the mother plant at the root ball.
- Carefully pull the roots that are attached to the shoot from the root ball.
- Plant the shoot in a new spot or share with friends!
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.
Catherine Boeckmann
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I live in Illinois, zone 7a. Last year I did what you said, I cut back my artichoke plants in late October and then covered them with about 12 inches of leaf mulch. It seems that IL did have a fairly wet winter with alot of snow. When I uncovered the artichokes in the spring, they were just a mushy mess. Everyone of them had the roots rotted. I replanted last spring and am now ready to winterize once again but am afraid to use the same method. What did I do wrong? In fact the same thing happened to my raspberry bushes and strawberries. Could you please give me suggestions? Thank you.
Hi Jill,
Sorry to hear about your artichokes. Since they are a Mediterranean crop, winter protection can be a bit tricky, although it is definitely possible to overwinter them. If your wet winter (snow and rain) was also accompanied by periods of thawing and freezing, it may not have mattered how well protected your artichoke crowns and roots were because that excessive moisture making its way into the ground followed by colder freezing temperatures is a recipe for disaster.
You can certainly try to protect them inground again this year. Another way of doing it is to make a 2-foot-tall cage out of chicken wire (secured to the ground) that is 12 inches wider than the plant and fill it completely with leaves and straw. The cage will keep the leaves and straw in place. Some even recommend adding extra soil on top of the plants prior to mulching with leaves and straw.
An alternative is to dig up the crowns and roots, remove as much soil as possible and store for the winter in a box of moist sand or peat in a cool location, like a garage or basement.
Also, if you find yourself needing to plant new artichokes next year or in the future, consider planting varieties like Green Globe or Imperial Star, which have shorter growing seasons and are more hardy.
Hope this helps!
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?
