What state are you in? - seed potatoes will be more shipping than regular seeds, so local/closer folks may be a good idea. -Tina

For those of you who want to eat J.A. and not suffer the side effects, you may also want to try an enzyme supplement such as Omnigest or a similar product prior to eating them. It's similar in nature to Beano, but these products (there are several brands, available at any pharmacy, and relatively inexpensive)have enzymes to digest many types of complex carbs, fats, and proteins as well. The brand I've used, Omnigest, is not at all unpleasant to chew, (just bland, not chalky or anything) and really does help a lot. I learned about this stuff after abdominal surgery, and it really does work. Costs about $5 to $6 for a bottle which would do 3 meals a day for about two weeks, so it's obviously pretty cheap. It also does help a lot to pre-boil the sliced J.A.'s in a couple of changes of water first, too, as this gets some of the extra inulin and other complex carbs leached out.

So I planted my knobby store-bought ones in a large pot that a tree came in. They got plenty tall and were beautiful and disease free, but they did get eaten about 3 feet shorter at one point by my nemesis, the deer. I'm attributing their lousy production to that and the fact that I didn't water them much. The soil was really dry a lot of the time. They didn't flower. They did multiply, but not anything impressive for an invasive plant. However, I am believing you guys and have NOT dumped the dirt out. I'm sure it will grow plenty of artichokes next year. Seems like they like more water. I misunderstood the talk about them tasting better after hard frosts, though, and left them pulled up and exposed. They got soft in our hard frosts. I stuck some back under the soil and brought some in the house to see what happens over the winter.

Hm...I used to grow them, the one's I wanted to sprout up in spring again, just left them in the ground untouched. Konrad