Why you don’t like artichokes any more

Don’t like artichokes as much as you used to?  Maybe it’s because the ones you’re likely to get at the store are the new, cheaper, tasteless variety, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.

The board introduced the first annual seeded artichokes, the most popular of which is known as the imperial star, to farmers in the early 1980s. The new plant had a lot of obvious benefits. The annuals could be planted closer together than the globes, producing double the amount of the globes at 900 cartons per acre. Whereas globes took a year to reach maximum yield, the seeded chokes could be harvested in six months, leaving space to grow lettuce and other cash crops on the same land for double the profits. They weren’t dependent on the cooler, Mediterranean climate globes need to thrive.

The only difference was quality. The seeded chokes were cheaper, but far less tasty. Their leaves were thinner than the pulpy globe’s. But over the years, geneticists have worked hard to change that and to replicate every other aspect of the globe artichoke, down to the thorns that crown each leaf.

The article includes interviews with Coastside farmers John Giusti and Joe Muzzi.  Muzzi spoke on this topic at the Committee for Green Foothills event a couple of months ago.  It was one of many eye-opening things we learned that day.