[scotty]

hi all,

a few questions, started these from seed this year and they are growing in my tunnel, now about 2ft high and have started to produce a head each.
1 ok 2 have purple heads and 1 has a green head...is this normal? still quite small in size, very tightly closed still

2 can i eat them this year or are they like asparagus? best left the first year, and if best left should i cut the head of at the end of the year?

3 heard they should be taken out at the end of 3 years?

sorry about all the questions, i have never grown these before, can't wait to eat them though! 

cheers
Di

[Swing Swang]

To answer your question based on my experience of growing these from seed in Feb 2009:

1 - Quite a lot of variation from globes grown from seed (mine are also of different colours/varying heights/varying spikiness/variable flavour). All edible.

2 - Shouldn't really eat in first year to conserve strength - however I'd eat the first central fruit on each plant, and nip out all of the rest, so you can weed out any really unpleasant ones and get a feel for what they are going to look like.

4 - Yes, replant every 3-4years (from offsets) to maintain vigour. Actually if your seed-grown plants are anything like mine you'll want to do this in anycase because some of the plants will be better flavoured/fleshier leaved/better tasting etc etc and you'll want to propogate from these.

Enjoy

SS

[scotty]

thankyou...eehhh how do i do offsets?

cheers
Di

[Maxine Groobey]

Joining in to learn here   how do you propogate them?

[Swing Swang]

The link below should help:

http://www.garden-grower.com/growing-vegetables/globe-artichoke.shtml

[scotty]

thank you very much, great website for lots of things!
will be doing lots of reading now

[Maxine Groobey]

Thanks for that link swing swang