Mmm! Do you like artichokes? I love them. Whenever I go to Italy, which is usually about once a year, I love those first Carciofi all Romana, young artichokes slowly cooked in garlic and olive oil and wine and soft as butter with parsley scattered over and good bread. I could eat it every day. I want to grow them - you can't find them easily in the uk and they are such wonderful things to eat.
So this year I am growing three different varieties. The best way to propogate them is to find a good plant and divide a bit of the root and put it in a pot over the winter and plant out in the spring - that way you know its going to have good fruit because you have seen it on the parent plant. Sowing from seed is more risky, some of the plants might not bear fruit. But I am sowing six of three varieties and I figure some of them will be ok. In the autumn I will take a bit of the root from the good ones and pot them up for the winter and plant them out next spring. That way I will be developing a good 'orchard' of artichokes! I am going for an Italian purple variety called Violetta di Chioggia which is an early variety and you can eat the globes whole when they are young and then wait until later in the summer for a second crop. In between I will have Green Globe improved which has been bred from Green Globe and which is very fruitful. I have also found an old French variety called Gros Vert de Laon which has beautiful fat globes with a wonderful flavour. I have grown two to a 3" pot, three of each variety and will pot them up and not plant them out until all risk of frost is over. I can't wait to see them grow...they are just appearing now.....
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| The first signs of a baby artichoke seedling - amazing to think it will grow to be four foot tall! |
Hm...eighteen plants will take up so much room. Fortunately these thistle like plants should be safe from rabbits and so don't need to go into the Patch with its rabbit proof fence. I plan to put some amongst the fruit trees against the sheltered bank at the back of the barn. But I need more space for the others. Then, just at the right time, a friend lent us his digger for an afternoon and we dug a long strip all along the bank beside the Patch. This has almost doubled the size of our plot and made two lovely terraced beds. I want to plant the zucchini in one of these and artichokes in the other. We scooped back the grass and nettles (which I had already sprayed to kill the roots) and formed a bank with the mass of roots. Then we turned the topsoil over with the digger to start the process of forming a good tilth. This makes it so much easier to work the soil with a spade! We had it all done in under an hour - the bliss of machinery. The following morning I got up early and moved twelve barrow loads of precious well rotted cow manure donated in the autumn by our friendly farming neighbour onto the terraces. I will leave them alone for a couple of weeks and hope that the spring rain will soak in the goodness of the manure, softening the earth and then I will dig them over ready for planting in May.
Oh wow! I can just see those artichokes standing proudly and picking those wonderful buds, slurping them with hollandaise or melted butter and then handing round white plates with carciofi alla Romana for lunch, glistening with rich green olive oil...a cool glass of white wine... Bon appetito!
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