Every garden needs a cardoon... or five
AS a rule, I prefer to enthuse and encourage. I’m not above the occasional bribe or inducement, certainly, but the times I issue a direct instruction are few. This is one of those times. Whether ornamental or edible, your garden needs a cardoon or five. I planted my first perhaps 20 years ago, having read of their delicious stems, and ended up loving them as much for their year-round stature and their ability to draw in a wealth of beneficial insects.
Cardoons look like the result of a tryst between a thistle and a giant celery and bear more than a passing resemblance to globe artichokes. The leaves are large, silver-grey, opening from the stem as if armour plating peeling from a dinosaur. Flower spikes 6ft–9ft high thrust skywards from spring; the flowers carried at their tips resemble globe artichokes fairly closely. They are rather beautiful, opening, in much the same way as mature globe artichokes, into hand-sized purple flowers that draw a festival of bees and other pollinators. Sadly, the immature flowers are in no way as largehearted, succulent or delicious as their lookalike, but if you have need of a sturdy mace for smiting burglars about the head and soft organs, they are perfect.
Although the flowerheads disappoint in the kitchen, the inner stems and heart of the plant are superb. Cut off a youngish leaf and strip away the flesh from the crisp, ribbed central stalk. I’ve read in a few old books that this stalk can be excellent raw: the most succulent stalks, thinly sliced, can be pretty good, but that’s the best review I can offer.
To be delicious, use a vegetable peeler to shave away the tough ribs on the outer surface, as you might from a celery stalk, leaving what resembles a rather ineffective shoehorn. This can be blanched and served with a vinaigrette or a garlicky mayonnaise, roasted, stewed or braised, added to a gratin or used as you might celery. Its flavour is subtle, yet very present, perhaps closest to globe-artichoke hearts, with a hint of celery’s earthy, bitterness to straighten out what might otherwise be too onedimensionally sweet.
Cardoons can also be blanched in the horticultural sense, as celery often is, to encourage succulence. In midsummer, those large leaves can be gathered up around the heart of the plant, as if gathering hair for a ponytail, and tied to form a trunk of sorts. I saw this beautifully realised at West Dean Gardens in West Sussex, where thick newspaper, tied in place with string, formed a collar that protected the stalks from damage and excluded light from the centre. This blanching process takes around six weeks. It’s not essential to do this, but the resulting harvest is sweeter, more tender and paler, making a delicious variation on the regular harvest. Blanched or not, the stalks quickly lose texture after being cut, so harvest when you’re ready to eat them.
Let me not pretend that cardoons will keep body and soul together or feed the 5,000: as much as they are strikingly large, their crop is not huge and the autumninto-winter window of harvest relatively short. That said, they are delicious and unbuyable; I’ve never seen cardoons for sale, even in farmers’ markets.
Perhaps as valuably, cardoons offer architectural splendour throughout the year, bringing structure and height to the garden even in winter. They need space— they can easily extend to 6ft wide and the flowerheads might exceed that in height, so allow 30in–50in between plants, depending on your concept of neighbourliness.
You can start cardoons off from seed in modules in early spring, planting them out when they are an inch or so tall. Adding compost or manure to the soil will get them off to a good start. If you are looking to get ahead, you can start with a young plant. They couldn’t be easier to grow well: tolerant of poor soils and happy in semi-shade, cardoons are pleasingly free from pests, other than potential slug damage when very young. If you have a windy garden, stake them well as they become established.
Ongoing care is minimal. I like to leave the dead flowers and flower stems on the plant for overwinter structure and interests, before cutting them back hard in spring to encourage new growth. After a few years, once they have formed a substantial clump, you can split cardoons in autumn—or carefully remove the small offshoots that develop at the edges—and then replant or pot them up.
Mark Diacono grows edibles, both usual and unusual, at Otter Farm in Devon (www.otterfarm.co.uk) Next week Thugs
Cardoons are unbuyable; I’ve never seen them for sale