Apocalypse-Grade Permaculture, Part 3 - j-choke
Survive collapse by engineering your landscape to produce food automatically.
This is another installment in a multipart series that is geared toward permaculture for preppers and survivalists. If you are new to the series, it is probably helpful to go back and read part one first.
Part 3: The Jerusalem Artichoke system.
What is better than food you can grow? Food that grows itself! That is why jerusalem-artichoke should be one of the first things planted in any survivalist compound.
Description and history:
The jerusalem-artichoke is not an artichoke and not from Jerusalem, so the name doesn’t really make sense. It is however closely related to the domesticated sunflower, except that the edible part of it grows underground, so some people have suggested the name “sunroot.”1 This is a better name I think, and should be promoted. But names are not very important for our purposes.
What is important is that this is an ultra-tough long-lived perennial that forms dense, spreading colonies. Stalks shoot out of the ground in the spring and top out 5-7 feet tall. The stalks produce flowers in September, before dying back in late fall or early winter. J-choke is native to the eastern and mid-west parts of the US and Canada, and is hardy in USDA zones 3-9. It exists in the wild from Texas to Ontario, but can be grown in most of North America. They prefer full sun, but will still produce a smaller crop in part shade.
Key Stats:
Calories per pound: 345.2
Calories per acre per year: 12,075,000.
Years to bearing: Two.
Here are the top eight reasons why this plant is incredibly awesome for survivor permaculture:
One - absurdly big yield: It is possibly the highest-yielding temperate-climate crop in existence. The University of Minnesota reported an average of 35,000 pounds of tubers per acre. Other universities have reported even higher numbers.3 This even bigger than potatoes, which is considered an extremely prolific crop. Now yields are going to be extremely variable, based on soil quality, sun, rain, fertility, etc.
But even if your yield was only 1/4 of what the University of Minnesota reported, one acre would still provide you with about 3 million calories, which is about what it takes to feed a family of four for a year.
Two - self-spreading: Suppose you want to grow half an acre of j-chokes. Well, you don’t necessarily have to plant half an acre. You could, for example, plant three-foot wide rows with a few feet of empty space in-between rows. If conditions are favorable, your indomitable food source will fill in the empty space over the course of several years.
But the spreading nature is also easily controlled. It cannot spread into ground that is mowed regularly. So if you want to contain it to a certain area, simply mow around it.
Three - almost impossible to kill: The lessons that have learned best are the ones that I have learned the hard way - by doing something super dumb. I once planted j-chokes in a place where my wife didn’t want them. I know, I know - I’m that guy.
I thought to myself, “well, I only planted them just this spring. I’ll dig them up in the fall and transplant them to a better spot. I’ll be really careful to get every single tuber. I’m sure they can’t spread very far in just one growing season.” Feel free to laugh at my silly ways. The next year they bounced right back up again, bigger and more widespread than the year before.
Every source that I have consulted corroborates my experience these plants do not go away. But there is one very important exception to this rule. The extremely knowledgeable Samuel Thayer reports, in his Nature’s Garden, that j-chokes planted in clay soil, if they are not harvested, will disappear in 6-8 years. If they are harvested, they will do just fine, indefinitely. He speculates that because clay soil is heavy, they require the disturbance that harvesting causes, to regularly loosen it up.
Oh, and if you do have clay soil, it is a good idea to add as much organic matter to it as humanly possible, to help ensure that your plants do not pull this “disappearing act.”
Four - stealth factor: Many people have absolutely no idea what j-chokes look like, or that they even exist. I certainly didn’t, until I started researching and experimenting with permaculture around 12 years ago. So, if someone is out looking for food to rob, they might walk right past your j-choke patch, and never have the slightest inkling that they are edible.
Five - wide harvest window: They have one of the most generous harvest windows of any major calorie source; they can be harvested any time from late fall, right through winter, and into early spring. They are best after cold weather sets in, in the fall, and before they start sending up new shoots in the spring. Your only barrier to winter harvest is if the ground is frozen.
Six - storability: It literally feels as if the generosity of this plant is without end. Besides giving a massively prolific yield, and a generous harvest window, and spreading itself, it is also storable. Tubers harvested in late fall can be placed in containers of moist sand, or moist earth, and kept in a cool basement right through to spring.
Seven - short time to bearing: Woody perennials like hazelnuts, chestnuts, apples, mulberries, pears, and so on, require anywhere from 4-10 years before they start bearing - all the more reason to plant them now! J-choke, being an herbaceous perennial, has a huge advantage in this department. You can begin to harvest it lightly in year two, and basically as much as you want by year three.
Eight - mulch crop: Like Dave Jacke says in his Edible Forest Gardens, a good permaculture design should have a system to grow its own mulch built into it. J-choke is fantastic mulch producer. In late fall, you can cut down all those tall dead stalks with a scythe, and use them to mulch your veggie garden, or wherever else they are needed.
How to source: There are lots of nurseries online that sell j-choke starts and/or tubers. But if you start networking around your neighborhood, you can probably find at least one person that already has a patch of them, and will gladly let you dig as many tubers as you want, for free. This is by far the best way to do it. You will save money, and build local connection.
How to grow: These beautiful sunflower cousins are so easy to grow it almost feels like cheating. The way I like to do it is put down a layer of several inches of municipal compost right on top of undisturbed grass. I push the tubers down into the bottom of the compost layer. Then I put a few inches of wood chips on top. I water it well, and protect it with deer fencing for the first year.
You might ask why I don’t bother to till the compost in. First, I don’t own a tiller, and also I think that tillers tend to damage soil structure as well as the soil micro-biome. And I thing that over time, earthworms will incorporate the compost into the soil for me. However, there may be some situations where tilling it in is the right idea. Like maybe in a super heavy clay soil.
In general, my thoughts on municipal compost and wood chips are, get them now while they’re cheap. They represent an easy way to get plants established and add lots of organic matter to your soil. They will not be available at all after a collapse.
J-chokes are just like hybrid hazelnuts in that when they are young, they are very vulnerable to deer browse, but once they are established it does not seem to bother them at all.
Transplanting: Once you have a patch established, it is a good idea to dig up some tubers and plant a second patch, if you have room. I think the easiest way to do this is with a front loader, if you have one. If you have added enough organic matter to make your soil loose, then just scoop up a chunk of your patch with your loader blade. Drive over to the location of your new patch, and plant. The spot that you dug up will fill back in so fast the next year, you will never know it was gone.
I think the best time to do this is late fall, after they have gone dormant. Ideally, you would have already sheet-mulched your new planting area a few months earlier - but even if you haven’t, they will still probably be fine; my first patch was not sheet-mulched ahead of time either.
How to harvest: Harvest for j-chokes is about simple as it gets. The tubers grow 2-4 inches below the surface. Dig them up with a shovel and cook them. Or for storage, put them in buckets with moist sand, soil, or sawdust, and place in a cool humid place. They can be harvested anytime after the first hard frosts of fall, up until their first small shoots start emerging in the spring.
Conclusion: Ok, so let’s sum up all the ways that jerusalem-artichoke is perfect for survivor permaculture: massive yield, ultra tough, spreads itself, stealth, storability, easy to harvest, mulch-maker plant, and short time to bearing. If someone was going to plant only one crop (why in the world anyone grow only one thing???) I would suggest that it be j-choke. An acre of this is as sure of a safeguard against starvation as any of us can reasonably hope for in this life.
Samuel Thayer, Nature’s Garden, Forager’s Harvest Press, 2010, pg 415.
https://www.fatsecret.co.in/calories-nutrition/generic/jerusalem-artichokes?portionid=48785&portionamount=1.000&frc=True
https://transformativeadventures.org/2017/10/10/the-sunchoke-or-jerusalem-artichoke/#:~:text=Plant%20disease%2Dfree%20healthy%20tubers,during%20drought%20may%20increase%20yields.