A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

Adding my observations to the questions about sunchokes and digestion. I’ve been a vegetarian for over thirty years too, and could happily eat any vegetable until I grew sunchokes. The effect was explosive. I loved the taste of them but the windiness was beyond my tolerance. I reluctantly dig up the two thriving patches I had.

It then took three or four years at least to fully get rid of them. I found them to be thugs in the vegetable garden; they will continue to grow several feet high from the tiniest bit of tuber left in the ground.

A pity as they’re so easy to grow and to cook. The flowers are attractive and the taste is delicious. My experience suggests that they’re ruthless spreaders as well though.

Whoa, explosive! Well, I plan to eat my first batch this fall so we'll se if I....

I appreciate the heads up just in case, this is the first I've heard that they can be this extreme! And if you've been eating a vegetable based diet for that long too, and still had trouble digesting them I may have a similar experience...

Before I planted the sunchokes I had a relative of it in the garden, I'm not 100% sure but I think Helianthus divaricatus. And it is the most thuggish plant I've ever had in the garden, it also had a small rhizome. The one good thing I can say about it was even though it will resprout from any bit left behind the starter leaves are very characteristic and easy to rogue out, even if you have to rogue them out by the hundreds at first. After having them for nearly 20 years in my front yard, I was mostly able to get rid of them after diligent hoeing for a season. It did seem a bit hopeless at first though because so many had grown, they colonized all available space. This year I see a few sprouting but not many. The family is tenacious I guess!

 

[heirloomgal]

i wonder if it would help to gradually increase them in the diet instead of eating a lot of them all at once?

I think so. It's a subject I plan to look into a little. Apparently, it's not absorbed or digested in the stomach but the colon where it's instead fermented by bacteria. It's a prebiotic, and good for gut health though. Reading a tiny bit about it I can see why it was considered a good crop during times of food scarcity, it slows your digestion so you actually extract more nutrients from all the foods your eating. Psyllium looks like a key supplement you can take to reduce the wind from the chokes. Too bad, because I absolutely detest psyllium!

Interestingly, not consuming sunchokes in the same time period as other high FODMAPS foods (like wheat or dairy) or even cauliflower and broccoli is recommended to help reduce the inulin effects.

 

[Decoy1]

Interesting. At the time I was so affected that I didn’t look into possible approaches to alleviating the effects, nor indeed into the digestive benefits.

In what form have you eaten psyllium? I’m rather prejudiced against food supplements. It looks like you can grow Plantago ovata, but the process of producing an edible form of the seeds looks rather complicated.

 

[Vanalpaca]

I do have a question on growing beans for seed saving. I also have beehives
that may hunt the garden and crosspollinate but the bees usually are off hunting better nectar sources. Anyway, if I grow the pole beans along my fences and change varieties every 8 feet, can I gather seed from the middle of each patch and be fairly sure of purer seeds? I am assuming that like tomatoes there are tricks to keeping the seed fairly pure. For tomatoes, we gather the earliest blooms and plant varieties with different maturity so they aren't blooming all at once. I'm not going to be able to separate different varieties 20 or 50 feet apart to get pure seed like 'google says'... So what say you bean growers? What has been your experience. I'm also going to be growing some up the outside stalks of the corn patch....

 

[Vanalpaca]

Whoa, explosive! Well, I plan to eat my first batch this fall so we'll se if I....

I appreciate the heads up just in case, this is the first I've heard that they can be this extreme! And if you've been eating a vegetable based diet for that long too, and still had trouble digesting them I may have a similar experience...

Before I planted the sunchokes I had a relative of it in the garden, I'm not 100% sure but I think Helianthus divaricatus. And it is the most thuggish plant I've ever had in the garden, it also had a small rhizome. The one good thing I can say about it was even though it will resprout from any bit left behind the starter leaves are very characteristic and easy to rogue out, even if you have to rogue them out by the hundreds at first. After having them for nearly 20 years in my front yard, I was mostly able to get rid of them after diligent hoeing for a season. It did seem a bit hopeless at first though because so many had grown, they colonized all available space. This year I see a few sprouting but not many. The family is tenacious I guess!

I believe I read that maybe 20% of folks have adverse GI reactions. Maybe eat a little at a time. Inulin is supposed to feed the good gut bacteria. Explosive may just be too much of a good thing...

 

[flowerbug]

Interesting. At the time I was so affected that I didn’t look into possible approaches to alleviating the effects, nor indeed into the digestive benefits.

In what form have you eaten psyllium? I’m rather prejudiced against food supplements. It looks like you can grow Plantago ovata, but the process of producing an edible form of the seeds looks rather complicated.

IMO just gradually eat more beans. yes, i'm a bit biased...

 

[Vanalpaca]

IMO just gradually eat more beans. yes, i'm a bit biased...

But how does gradually eating more beans help with digesting the inulin starch from sunchokes?

 

[flowerbug]

But how does gradually eating more beans help with digesting the inulin starch from sunchokes?

shhh! it may not make any difference at all, but eating more beans will likely help out your digestive system bigger pipe at the bottom end...

people can always try and report (hehe a pun ) back...

 

[Anniekay]

But how does gradually eating more beans help with digesting the inulin starch from sunchokes?

I don't think it would but at least you'd toot less !!