Globe Artichoke in a half wine barrel

They don't exactly romp away but you'll have a good size plant by the end of the season
Cut off any flowers it makes this year, so you have a strong plant to over-winter.

I throw some fleece over mine for the winter, as they're not the hardiest of plants.
Some of them have spines on the buds which you have to cut off before cooking. I grew mine from seeds and dumped the really spiny plants.

If you've bought a plant it shouldn't be spiky

Plants are not generally spiny, unlike some of the closely related cardoons, but they DO like a really good root run and make very large solid root systems. So in a half barrel you are going to be very limited and unlikely to get those really big 'heads' that you see in the super market.
The crowns are also extremely vulnerable to frost damage and rotting in winter, so especially in any container you would need to protect them with straw in winter if you are in a cold area and avoid them getting waterlogged.
Geoff Hamilton always used to promote growing them as an annual, by starting the seed very early in the greenhouse and cropping them in the autumn. I managed to emulate that on one occasion in the UK but since moving to France I have never managed to get the plants to produce heads the same year, despite the warmer summers and starting the seed in February. And most of my perennial plants have given up the ghost after a couple of cold winters.

Thanks for all your advice folks. Here's "Art" in his new home!;



The barrel took 240 litres of compost and there are plenty of drainage holes in the bottom. We'll pop in some chicken manure pellets in a couple of months.

Hoping it's enough to give a reasonable sized plant which will be an ineresting feature for our garden - and if we get some edible chokes next year then that will be a bonus! Wish us luck!