Grow Your Own Magazine

I bought tiny globe artichoke plants in pots at the farmers market yesterday. Now I know that if you raise em from seed you won't be harvesting them till the year after planting em, and I planted some crowns earlier this year that I'm hoping to get a harvest from this year, and I presume that because the plants are fairly small, they've been grown from seed (ooooops, I forgot to ask), but will I be ok planting them out now? I'm planning on putting them down the lottie but wasn't sure if I'm a bit late now and I should keep em in pots, or if its ok to plant em out and they'll stay in the ground over winter and hopefully bear fruit next year??

There's a good clip on the Allotment Channel about planting out Artichokes...http://www.allotmenttv.co.uk/play.as...s&Category=May

I made the mistake last year of trying to keep my artichoke plants in a pot. It was even a VERY LARGE pot. Unfortunately, the leaves of this plant are huge, and the leaf-span can easily reach 18". Inside a pot, it's just not practical, especially if there are any other plants nearby. So I planted them into the ground as directed, so they're 2 ft apart. Once grew real fast, the other didn't. This year I realized the smaller plant was kinda in the shade from one of the large palm trees, so I moved it over into the sunny side; now it's as big as the other one. THe first one yielded one artichoke last year, but, instead of picking it, I waited, and, suddenly, it sprouted purple fuzzies on the top Very pretty, but probably not as edible. I'll see what happens this year. Oh yeah, I bought mine is tiny pots too, and they grew very fast.