Good luck! I have yet to get an artichoke through winter. Actually, it is early spring that seems to get them, with hot days followed by sudden freezes the past few years. Also I have a vole problem. They get down in there and eat the roots. This year I have sprinkled the plants and their mulch with a castor-based repellent, we'll see if that helps. I feel like you, if Jefferson could do it, can't I?

Sunnibel - Regarding your artichokes, did they get through the hard freezes? Did you take any protective measures?

You can dig the roots, pot them, and put them under the house for winter. I did that successfully one year.

Charlie, it's only been a few winters that I've had the room to try with the chokes, and none of them have been "normal". But yes, they seem to be fine with the normal course of things and revive after long hard freezes just fine. But we've had 80ð days in February and 26ð nights in late April, and it seems like they only have enough oopmf to get through one or two freeze-thaws like that. They will start growing again in March, then freeze out in a sudden late freeze in April. I've had them unprotected and lightly protected. I didn't want to encourage my voles with a heavy mulch. Maybe it makes sense they don't have too much in reserve, they are only yearling perrenials at their first winter.

If mine make it through to the spring, I will try harder to protect them from late freezes. And maybe I'll go out now and dig one of the small ones to try in a pot over winter.

I have a real challenge in growing artichokes being in Zone 5a. Have had seed sprouting success but thats about it. I wonder if you could do the following:

put some ground cloth over the plant before bedding it down for the winter then bury it with 12" or so of dirt

Then in the spring uncover them after the night temps are above 45 degrees or so then make a mini-greenhouse that you put over the plant, along with a bowl of water inside, until the day temps are in the mid-70s. I am doing this for tomatoes; in SE Wisconsin we have cool springs here with possible snow up to 1st week of May some years. I will be doing this this year for my peppers and tomatoes.

Another idea, which I have not tried personally, would be to bury some fresh cow dung near the plants which will provide extra heat and create a mini-climate near the plants all winter long (you'd have to remove it plus some surrounding dirt in early spring and throw it in your mulch pile though or I would think you might burn out your plants)

The mini greenhouse is just a square frame of 2x4s with holes drilled vertically and 2 loops of wire at right angles to each other; then clear plastic stapled on the bottom where the frame touches the ground.