Unlocking the Secrets of Cardoon – A Must-Grow Edible for Your Garden

Join me to discover the incredible Cardoon – not only is this a must-grow edible plant for your garden or food forest, its also a perennial vegetable that will come back year after year, and is closely related to artichoke.

In this video we’ll watch the plants grow from seed to harvest and discover the amazing uses this plant has along the way – from chop and drop, to attracting pollinators, cooking and eating the cardoon leaf stalks, and admiring the stunning ornamental beauty that they add to an edible landscape!

Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) originates from the western and central Mediterranean region, where it was cultivated in ancient times and still grows wild today. In Italian and Spanish, it’s known as “Cardo.” In French, it’s referred to as “Cardon.”

Wild cardoons have more thorns to protect against animals and harsh environments, while the cultivated varieties grown by gardeners have fewer thorns for easier cultivation. They have become invasive in some regions, so it’s good to check that before you grow them and/or manage responsibly.

These are fairly hardy and I grow them as a perennial plant since my climate is suitable for that, however they can also be grown as an annual in colder regions.

There’s so much to love about the incredible Cardoon, so I hope you enjoy watching and finding out more 🙂

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References:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-019-0580-4
https://agronomy.it/index.php/agro/article/view/1021
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7278730/

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Hi, I’m Kalem, and this channel features all sorts of unusual and exotic fruiting plants with tips of how to successfully grow them. I’m interested in all things gardening and love growing my own food and all types of edible plants.
I live on a 2 acre piece of land in New Zealand where we are turning a grass paddock into and abundant, edible paradise and food forest! So come along on this journey with me as I experiment with growing, and try to push the limits of what I can grow. I’ll share with you my successes and failures so hopefully you’ll learn from them and have a go yourself! Come learn with me and Subscribe to join this awesome community 🙂

0:00 Intro
0:39 Planting Cardon seeds
1:26 Cardoon seedlings and planting out
2:07 Cardoon growth over Winter
2:18 How to eat Cardoon
3:25 Harvesting Cardoon
4:08 Cardoon as mulch – Chop & Drop
4:33 Cooking Cardoon
8:17 What else is Cardoon good for?
9:57 Cardoon flowers
11:30 Cardoons annual cycle begins again
11:48 Cardoon seed heads
12:00 Other cool uses for Cardoons

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This is a Cardon I like to call it Nature’s Garden sculpture because they create such a statement in the garden they’re very fast growing this is super tall right now I’m on a ladder and you’re on a chair with a tripod and it just shows how tall this plant is but

The value of growing this plant goes far beyond just the beauty that this plant brings it’s also an edible plant it brings in tons of pollinators too and creates such a large amount of biomass to improve your garden but let’s go check out the seeds I’ll show you how to

Grow these and then we’ll get into all the different things that you can do with this plant oh wow look at that beautiful moth wow that moth is beautiful he’s loving it down there so these are what the seeds look like and while you can directly sew them

Into the ground I’m just going to sew them into these Little Seedling trees often times the seeds are sewing in the spring and then growing into the summer and then right through to the cooler months where they’re then ready to harvest and be eaten I’m actually sewing

These in Autumn though because I found that works quite well in my area since I have a fairly mild WI winter here it only gets to around -1 or -2° C and since these plants still quite like that cooler weather they should still grow pretty well through the autumn and

Winter and put on a good amount of vegetation to then be ready to eat in the late winter or early spring while the weather is still nice and cool they’re not a plant that you want to harvest during the hotter months and we’ll get onto that a little bit later

On and the reasons why but first let’s just jump forward to when these seeds hopefully will germinate so it’s been a few weeks and the seeds are sprouting and they look looking pretty nice and I’m just going to keep them growing in here until they get a little bit

Bigger okay they’ve reached a bit of a larger size now they’re looking nice and strong so they’re ready now to be planted outside in the ground the main thing about these is that the soil that you want to plant them in needs to be free draining so not

In an area that gets boggy or wet or anything like that and carons also really like the Sun so I’ve got a nice sunny spot here in my food Forest I’m also going to mulch these plants which is something that I’d recommend I’m using wood chips this should help to

Protect the roots from cold temperatures and also when we get to Summer it should stop them from drying out as fast through the cold months the Cardon continued growing and putting on some really nice growth you can see these leaves are just looking really beautiful after just 6 months of

Starting these plants we’re now in early spring and the Cardon has turned into this magnificent plant with these huge almost prehistoric looking leaves during the colder is when it’s best to use the edible parts of the plant which are these thick Leaf stalks and you can see

They’re nice and thick they’re a fairly light whitish color and since the weather is still cool it’s a good time to eat them before they start going to flour we will cook some of these up in just a minute but I wanted to tell you about a process called blanching that

These plants often go through before they’re eaten this is when the leaves of the Cardon are all pulled up in an upright position and tied together and then the stems of the plant are covered traditionally they were covered with soil where it was would be mounded up

All around the plants fairly high but it was a lot of work to do that so often what’s done now is they’re covered with cardboard or Fabric or even dark plastic those stems often remain covered for maybe a month sometimes even two months before the whole plant is then harvested

During the winter so the purpose of that blanching is to stop the sunlight from reaching the stems of the plant makes them go A Whiter color because they’re not developing the same chlorophile that they normally would and that whiter color in the stems indicates that they’ll have less bitterness and they’ll

Be more tender and and flavor as you can see I haven’t done this process with my plants but since it’s such early spring these haven’t had much light over the winter anyway and the leaves are keeping themselves fairly shaded so the stems themselves still have a fairly white

Appearance and they’re nice and thick and juicy looking too I’m not going to harvest the whole plant that would be a huge amount of food for just me so I’m just going to try some of these stems and then I can show you some of the other uses for these plants after

That so to prepare these stems I’m just taking off that outer Ridge of both sides of the stem and already you can see that even just one stem is a pretty substantial amount of food and the stems actually look quite a lot like celery with these extra Leaf trimmings I’ll use

Them as mulch in the food forest and by the way this is one of the most useful things about these plants I’ll often chop off a bunch of the outer leaves stems and oil which are filled with a lot of moisture and nutrients and I’ll

Chop them up and lay them on the ground and since Cardon create this biomass very quickly it’s such a good way to grow my own mulch and nourish the soil with good amounts of organic material so we’re going to quickly make two different dishes with the Cardon to

Try out the first one being bed fried Cardon and the other one stuffed Cardon stalks both of these require the same initial steps so I’m peeling the stalks to remove those tough outer fibers on the outside and with this Inside Edge you can just start cutting the thin skin

Off and then the rest should easily peel away Ah that’s so satisfying as you prepare these it’s a good idea to drop them into some lemon water and that will stop the stem from going brown once you’ve peeled them kind of like apples this is a piece of the completely

Raw Cardon so you can actually eat these in salads which I thought was probably a bit weird since I imagined it to be quite bitter but I’ve removed all of the green Parts on this so let me give it a try so it’s a little bit stringy but

There’s no bitterness at all it’s actually not bad I imagine probably if you like cut this that way a little bit against the strands then it would make it even less stringy but you could probably just eat it with like some hummus let’s try that that’s actually quite good it’s

Very juicy refreshing and nice with the hummus I actually would eat it like that but for the rest of the Cardon let’s cook it up so we’re going to boil it in a pot of well saled water I’ll leave them in here for around 25 to 30 minutes

Until the pieces are tender but still with a slight bite to them this process is often the first step of cooking with Cardon as it helps to break them down and reduce the bitterness and It prepares them for for whatever meal you choose to incorporate them in okay so

For the deep fried Cardon I’m heating up some vegetable oil in a pot and making a better of 1/2 a cup each of flour and corn flour plus 2/3 of a cup of sparkling water and some salt all right let’s get these coated and drop them in

These shouldn’t take long to cook maybe only a minute or so and when they’re nice and golden you can take them out and drain them on a paper towel I’m sprinkling them with salt and serving them with a lemon wedge and O these that look pretty awesome so let’s

Taste them M yum these are actually really good the batter on the outside is nice and crunchy and then the lemon and the salt adds that really nice zingy saltiness and the inside the Cardon itself has quite a silky texture it’s quite surprising how silky and nice

Texture it’s gone and because it does have those strands although those have like broken down to the point where it’s easy to bite through you sort of know that there’s some texture in there it’s not just like a mushy vegetable this holds its shape really really nicely I

Really really like it it’s honestly so good this next recipe of stuffed Cardon is pretty easy and there are a bunch of different ingredients you could use I’ll put the full details of this plant-based option in the video description but basically you just make a stuffing and a

Sauce so I’m starting off with stir frying some onion garlic and capsicum for a couple of minutes and to that just adding some tomato breadcrumbs fresh thyme and oregano lemon zest and juice plus some salt and pepper and I’ll cook this all up for just a couple of minutes

Until the stuffing mix all comes together for the sauce I’m just combining some canned tomatoes some Veggie stock herbs salt and pepper and letting that simmer for around 10 minutes now we’ve just got to stuff the Cardon pieces with the stuffing we made and then arrange them in a baking dish

With some of the sauce underneath and some on top of the carons now I’m going to bake this for around 25 minutes until they’re heated through and the sauce is nice and bubbly and there we go I reckon this could make a pretty nice nice side dish but let’s see how it

Tastes yum I would even say that’s better than the battered one this is so delicious it’s like a real summery kind of meal and you can get super creative with this and stuff it with a bunch of different stuff I re it’s a big thumbs up for me cooking with cardoons is not

Even the main reason I grow this plant so let’s cover some of the other benefits of cardoons and other things they’re used for in my opinion these are very beautiful and ornamental plants and since they provide so much Lush growth and Beauty in Winter I love having them

In the garden and flourishing while much of the garden is dormant the leaves kind of hang over the pathways a bit and it leads to quite an immersive feeling in the food Forest as well as this due to their large size and decent height they do cut down on wind exposure and give

Some cold protection to some of my other plants growing near them which can especially help the more sensitive plants that I grow one thing that I have noticed though which I try not to do with carons now is to plant any trees kind of right under where the leaves

Will be hanging over the top of because it does seem to slow down the growth of those plants especially if they’re just immediately planted right up close to where the Cardon is I’ve noticed the same thing with weeds too though where around the base of the cardoons you’ll notice significantly less weeds growing

And sprouting and able to thrive so another word for this isopathy which in simple terms refers to plants that are able to release chemicals that affect the growth of neighboring plants there’s not a ton of information that I could find about that but there are a few

Studies I found talking about how Cardon leaf extract has shown promising inhibitory effects against weed seed germination which suggests its potential as a bioherbicide so this could potentially be used to your advantage where if you wanted to suppress weeds in a certain area you could plant these

Which might just have some effect on the neighboring weeds and how well they grow but overall I found these to be a really great plant in the food Forest even if there are other things around I just try not to plant trees like right in the

Drip line of the plant and it’s totally fine as we approach late spring the Cardon start to develop a large flower stalk with multiple flower heads and this provides a massive amount of structural Beauty even before the flowers open up I reck and they look pretty awesome and provide a lot of

Interest about a month Into Summer the flowers are now blooming and here in New Zealand it’s right around Christmas time it’s an absolute Scorch of a day here in Midsummer at the moment and these carons are just looking absolutely incredible they’ve got to a height of probably

Around 7 ft tall they’re covered in these amazing colored flowers and they’re in full bloom just covered in bees like lots of bumblebees and other insects here’s one just coming in now and it’s just so awesome that this was literally a seed around 9 months ago these are definitely a great plant for

The food Forest to create some really great height structure pollination benefits and having the ability to be able to chop and drop the leaves to improve the soil and the fact that they’re edible as well adds another great benefit to these even if you don’t eat them you know all the time it’s

Always there and it kind of produces more food Security in your garden by having a range of different things that you know you can eat even if you might not eat them regularly plus they’ve also been utilized by some of my bottle gour plants that have climbed up the flower

Stalks to get more sun you can see here like that one there is fully finished flowering so all of the blue has kind of dried back and now this is starting to produce the seeds inside and then you’ve got ones like this one here this is yet

To flour so it’s going to flour over a fairly good amount of time once the flowers had finished i cho the plants off of the base and despite the plant dying right back the roots remain alive so the Cardon will re-shoot from the base towards the end of summer when the

Temperatures are more mild and it will begin another annual cycle of vegetative growth followed by flowering again next summer if you do leave the plants to fully develop the seeds the flowerheads will release the seeds often attached to a papis which is this fluffy thing here and that’s responsible for carrying the

Seed away in the Wind as well as everything we’ve talked about so far Cardon have some other interesting uses too like the flowers being used as a natural renit and cheese making the leaves have also been used in paper production and they’ve got some uses in traditional medicine

Too I really enjoyed trying out different uses that plants have like in this video here where I show you seven surprising ways to use and eat sunflowers so I hope you enjoy that but thank you so much for watching and hope to see you in the next one