"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

In article ,
"Adam" writes:
|
| OK, here goes my first question about my new garden: does anyone have
any
| experience of growing cardoon? It's one of the few plants in my new
| allotment that isn't a weed, and is looking particularly healthy right
now
| with beautiful purple flowers. A Google search for it suggests that
I've
| probably missed my chance to eat the heads this year, as you have to
get
| them before they start flowering, but I can maybe eat the stems in a
few
| weeks time.

No, it is the young, blanched, stems that are eaten.

| Does anyone have any experience with cardoon? Any hints or tips for how
to
| get the best out of it? Any recipes?

I grew them; they taste like repulsant snozzcombers. Bitter as hell,
even when throughly blanched (in both senses).


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
I agree with Sacha that artichokes are much the better culinary plant. I
have cardoons and artichokes in the garden and have grown both in Cheshire
and Devon.
Both require a sunny open spot and would look well in the flower border. The
flowers are extremely beautiful and dry to an iridescent mauve head which in
some areas is highly prized by flower arrangers.(I heard a figure of £25 a
head in 1998). I had to catch the flowers just fully open to dry to the best
shape and colour, but the indoor display lasted for over a year.
As for taste artichokes are delicious this year growing to tennis ball size
without forming a coarse choke.
Our cardoons blanched as celery have a rather undistinguished bland taste-I
know they're reputed to be bitter. I treat them as perennials and they are
becoming overshadowed by trees. I am debating whether to move them to a
sunny spot as specimen plants but have written them of as a culinary
vegetable.
regards
David T