Artichokes and Cardoons

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My one ROUGE D'ALGER Cardoon that survived 15° last December and also survived 107° this summer, barely, is perking up in the now cooler conditions of October. I direct seeded some more ROUGE D'ALGER Cardoon in the same bed. Maybe, likely, it won’t get so cold this winter and I can get some of these to maturity.

Is that the variety you are still planting? I am interested in starting a variety of cardoon that is suitable to the hot dry summers here in Southern Colorado.

I am not, but just now read where Rouge D’Alger is an especially heat tolerant cultivar.

I’ll look through my seed stash and see if I might have some Rouge D Alger seeds remaining.

[karstopography]

I didn’t find any Rouge D’Alger seeds in my search. Looks like I planted them all last season.

[karstopography]

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These two cardoon are from my Rouge D’ Alger seeds and are carryovers from the fall of 2023 seed starts. I’ll let these flower if the happen to and collect seeds. Seems Rouge D’Alger has for the time being disappeared from US seed vendors stockpiles. The two cardoon I harvested this past spring didn’t display the red tints advertised for Rouge D’Alger. I may not have had the real deal seeds to begin with.

I may still have Rough of Algeria Cardoon seeds somewhere, if in fact they are true to type. My search last evening was pretty cursory. I couldn’t find any of the Hunchback of Nice seeds either.

If these Cardoon all in general grow in Italy, Spain and France as advertised those places aren’t immune to 100° days. From what I can tell, these suffer in high heat, but aren’t so fragile as to wilt at the first sign of any hot weather.