I have posted about Jerusalem artichokes in the past. I have them taking over a concrete block box so they can't take over my tiny backyard. They are a stately looking, tall plant. It also cracks me up about their flatulent nature. Gerard's Herbal, printed in 1621, quotes the English planter John Goodyear on Jerusalem artichokes: "which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men." The culprit as someone mentioned is inulin to which some people have a high sensitivity and they are not able to digest. Inulin is a polysaccharide (grouping of simple sugars). I wonder if Beano would be helpful or cooking it with epazote? Epazote helps reduce the noxious flatulent effects beans have on some people. Plants that use inulin do not store starches so as someone mentioned this is most helpful to diabetics. I can relate to the flatulence problems. I can eat beans with gusto and have very few if any major side effects. My mother would get cramps if she ate too many beans. Some folks get horrible gas from cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. It just depends upon how one's system digests foods. The same method someone mentioned about double boiling JAs works with beans too. If you soak the dry beans over night and then pour the water off, cook in new water and pour that water off, the complex starches which are on the bean coating will be greatly diminished which results in less gas problems. I just thought I'd throw that in. I swear I'm going to eat these JAs in my backyard some day but like someone else pointed out, if you dig them up and leave them out on the counter for more than a day, they shrivel up and go bad. I enjoyed this thread on JAs. I'll need to pay more attention to the jungle of them I have in my backyard.

I just recently found this discussion due to my continued attempts to stop whatever has been eating my sunflower seedlings. I checked the plants thoroughly, and I haven’t seen anything that may be causing parts of the leaves to be eaten off. I figured it might be a chipmunk since I’ve seen one hanging around here, but the small black ants crawling up and down the stalks have begun to draw my attention. At first, several of the plants went more or less unaffected, but now all of them have at least a few bites out of their leaves. I‘m pretty sure the ants have something to do with it, since there were no bites on one until they arrived. I know that ants take care of aphids for their honeydew, so I specifically checked on the undersides of leaves (as well as the new growth) for aphids. The variety is Mammoth, if that helps at all. I’ve seen small flies land on them here and there as well, but I doubt they’d eat leaves. Also, pretty sure it’s unrelated (since it‘s only on one of the eight affected plants), but I just noticed a brown mass of one of the leaves with small worms crawling along inside it. Wondering what those could be?

Wow, there sure isn't any information on this topic anywhere. I've done web searches and couldn't find any basic information. I went to Amazon to look for any books, but couldn't find any. Carol Deppe's book, "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties," has a little basic information. It is listed as an "outbreeder," like corn. It has 17 pairs of chromosomes(2n=34), although there are also some (maybe some wild variety) with 7 pairs. Also mentioned are Helianthus maximilianii (2n=34), and H. tuberosus (Jerusalem artichoke, 2n=102). But that's about it. It looks like you'll have to do your own experiments.

My heliopsis helianthoides 'Sunstruck' has been slow to establish, but I love the variegated foliage, so I am willing to give it more time, although the blooms are rather similar to a few of my coreopsis. Helianthus 'Lemon Queen' was added to my garden as divisions and did so poorly the first year (no blooming, no growth) I assumed they wouldn't even come back. Imagine my surprise when they grew into the largest clump of flowers in my yard in their second year, completely dominating the entire border and hosting something like 87 million pollinators. It was a sight to behold, and now I never want a garden without that particular cultivar again.