Transcript from video:

Courtney Brooke: Good morning. I wanted to show you something really exciting in my garden.

This is my artichoke patch. I got several artichokes here some different kinds that I’m experimenting with.

I planted them just last year so they’re about a year old. I love growing artichokes. They make these…. their flower is edible. They make that big flower but if you let that thing go to seed it’s this huge purple, bright purple,  like almost the color of my pants, lavendery beautiful thing that the insects just really love.

I’ve also been planting the cousin of the artichoke the cardoon, which is less well known for eating the flower buds but more well known for eating the leaves and the stems. So they make a really yummy spring green and I’m excited to be growing these ones. They’ve over wintered here. We did cover them once with a cloth when it got to really cold temperature not quite sure what would have happened if we didn’t, they might have still survived. They’re really hardy and grow really easily.

After they have grown for about a year ..you can see right here…. So you can see this see this is the mama plant here and then it’s made this little baby plant here.  It makes a side shoot so they just keep on making more and more of themselves.  You can propagate them vegetatively or just let them grow into a patch. They don’t need really high quality soil they can grow in pretty marginal areas and on the edges of things. Then you know in some harder less nutrient dense soil.

So yay for artichokes! It’s one of my favorite perennial landscape plants

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