Yes that is what I am thinking about exactly. From what I've read once you plant them you have them forever, so i thought I should look into the varieties before I planted them.
I will report back when I have learned more.
Scott

Yes, indeed, look into the different varieties that are available. There are different shapes and colors in the tubers offered, so flavor will probably be different, too.

hello,
my sunchokes are coming up wild (about a dozen of them in the front yard alone)
very attractive and about 8+ ft. tall
staking them was necessary due to their size
i'll try to post a photo if possible
watch out! they are invasive

I planted grocery store ones  they were about 6 tall. They are invasive, but with a little patience & digging you can get rid of them. I had to dig down about 6" & removed every small tuber I could find but they have not come back.
When you harvest, do not cut them down all at once as they are only good for about 2 weeks refrigerated. Leave a part of the stalk when you cut them down so you know where the tubers are, & dig up the tubers as you need them. You might need to store or use them in your zone, however. They are supposed to have a better flavor after the first frost.
Sunchokes will also set seed. I have not started them from seed yet, but you can save the seeds.
I would be interested in hearing of the other varieties, also.

I ended up planting some grocery store ones as well. I put one in a pot one my porch and the others all went into the ground. I'm glad I set the one aside because something ate the plants off to the ground when they got about 6 inches high. I suspect the groundhogs but we do have deer in the area as well. I will plant the potted one in the spring with protection. I am still planning to locate other varieties before spring though.

I haven't grown Jerusalem Artichokes yet but plan to put some in this Spring, either as a windbreak, or maybe at the back of a perennial bed. I was just looking them up earlier today; The Kitchen Garden (by Sylvia Thompson) mentions several varieties:
1.Fuseau, buff/brown and early, shape and size rather like small swet potatoes
2.Red Fuseau, dull red, smooth,
not as productive or early as the preceding
3.Smooth Garnet, red
4.Magenta Purple
5.Golden Nugget, yellow and carrot-shaped
6.Stampede, knobby and hard to scrub and peel (sounds like the kind I see at the grocery)

Most of the seed catalogs I've been getting list only one variety :-( Burgess and Jung's list unnamed varieties. Johhny's has Stampede, a special strain that is high-yielding and early, though it sounds as though early may not be a good thing, as the chokes are more flavorful after a frost?....

All I know is rats took out one of my plots. It never really rained for a month and they took residence in my sunchoke patch and devoured nearly 100 lbs of tubers. We ended up poisoning once they moved into our buildings.

Early is a good thing. They produce the tubers before the weather its too cold to produce them. All the frost does is it sweetens them.
{{gwi:425379}}

Biggest one I dug up this spring.

Ronniger's carries Stampede, Fuseau and Red Fuseau, and has photos of each. Have you found that the taller varieties always need to be staked, or only if they're in a windy location? The Dwarf Sunray sounds like a good solution- does anyone know where they're available?

Choke-eating rats?! Great, something new to worry about!

We harvested a similar clump of attached sunchokes as lkz5ia's except larger than two male hands and weighing in at 2.4 lbs. We went crazy this year and planted 24 tubers on new ground. The market type (knobby ones) flew out of the ground and set immense number of tubers. My Red Fuseas were weeded out by one of my new workers. (Admittedly, the sprouts were struggling.)

I've grown all those listed by tmtmom, originally offered by Seeds Blum out of Idaho. We do have to harvest because in the spring, most remaining ones don't resprout very well. I was running across tubers in Sept. that had never sprouted but just "sat there".

I wasn't aware that Dwarf Sunray was a sunchoke. Maybe I'm confusing it with a hybrid sunflower of the same name: Sunray.

hello.
i live in michigan.
never had sunchoke before, so a like to give a try.
is there any body knows where can i get seed or the root from?
thanks
aniko

I ordered Red Fuseau, White Fuseau, and Stampede from Roninger's last year, to augment the grocery store roots I planted in 2008.

I was impressed by the smoothness of the tubers on the Fuseau types -- sort of long and tapered, kind of like little sweet potatoes in shape, much less knobby than the other types. Which makes them easier to wash, clean, and peel.

We always peeled them after we cooked them, MUCH easier, like white potatoes. We cooked them like/ in place of potatoes too. Never made soup, but eat them raw & peeled as water chestnuts.
I am not sure what you mean by "invasive", we have plant like that down here, but not sunchokes.
I have mine in one end of a 5' X 40' raised bed, it is my hope they take the whole bed over.

Anyone know where I can order Fuseau type sunchokes?

Anthony

The Fedco Moose Tubers offers an interesting selection of sunchoke varieties, has anybody tried these? They call some of them "knob-free', which would certainly be appreciated.

It looks like http://www.oikostreecrops.com/ offers a pretty wide range of sunchokes, and a nice selection of other unconventional (and many perennial) edibles.

I grew sunchoke many years ago. They grow about5 feet tall, don't remember which variety I ordered, easy grow plant and multiply easy too. The problem is that if you don't prepare the soil well enough, they don't grow very big and many are in odd shapes which is hard to clean them. The taste is kinda bland, not as starchy taste as potatoes.