Artichokes Budding

Not too long ago, we assumed that growing artichokes along the Adirondack Coast was impossible. But it wasn’t. A fortuitous visit to the Château Ramezay garden in Montreal opened the possibility of artichokes budding in Rosslyn’s vegetable garden.

This morning, Pam surprised me with that photograph above. Beautiful artichokes budding once again. This is an especially poignant success story because the last two years have delivered exactly zero artichokes. 18 plants last summer and the summer summer before yielded no buds. Berms too low and ground too wet. After so many successful years of planting artichokes, it was disappointing.

But let’s backtrack a bit. I mentioned above that we were happily surprised when we discovered artichokes growing successfully and Montreal. I don’t recollect whether I took photographs at the time. I’ve looked, but my search has turned up nothing. I’d guess it was 2008 or possibly 2009. The earliest photographs I’ve been able to locate of artichokes growing in our garden are from the summer of 2010.

In the summer of 2019 Susan and I returned to the Château Ramezay garden.

By that point we’ve been successfully growing artichokes for the better part of a decade. We were pleased to see that once again there are several artichoke plants in the garden.

I mentioned that we’ve been unsuccessful more recently. Too much rain! In the summer of 2022 in the summer of 2023, the plants survived, but did not thrive. And there were no artichokes budding. Not one.

Last year I expressed optimism as we tried once again. 

Once these beautiful thistles are thriving in the ground, I will post an update. And then, the next magical moment will be the formation of the chokes! (Source: Artichoke Time Prequel)

The update never came because the formation of the “chokes” never happened. (I should note that my tendency to refer to the edible part of artichoke plants as “chokes” is actually erroneous. That term should be reserved for the fibrous interior of the bud.)

But, today we can celebrate. The tide has turned. At least a few of our plants are destined to produce delectable edibles. Hurrah for artichoke budding! Thank you, Pam, for the good news.