Gardener seeks advice after harvesting trouble-causing plants: 'Am I screwed?'

After harvesting a crop of sunchokes, a gardener on Reddit feared they'd made an explosive mistake and sought help from other users in the r/gardening subreddit.

Sunchokes, a delicious tuber known for its abundance of fiber and ability to cause uncontrollable gas when consumed in large amounts, are also notorious for their aggressive proliferation that can invade gardens and crowd out other plants, much like an invasive species.

Knowing this, the gardener worried they had doomed their garden to be taken over.

"Do I try and dig them all up or deal with it in the spring?" the OP asked in their plea for help. "Am I screwed?"

This gardener's problem highlights the importance of researching the plants you put in the ground, heeding warnings and advice from experts, and learning from the mistakes of other gardeners.

In this case, the gardener was relieved to discover that their garden would likely be fine if the tubers' spread was managed with persistent digging and mowing. Users suggested tackling the remaining tubers in the spring before new plants could have the opportunity to grow.

They were lucky their mistake wasn't worse. The Cool Down has covered all sorts of yard and garden mistakes, including those involving artificial turf, rubber mulch, and landscaping fabric, which can not only take hours and hours of manual labor to fully remove but is also terrible for the planet, too.

While they might seem like good options for aesthetic purposes or suppressing weeds, these artificial landscaping options are extremely difficult to get rid of. They are made of chemicals that leach into the soil and take years to break down, making them basically impossible to fully remove from your yard.

Instead of opting for unnatural landscaping installations, numerous other ways exist to create a beautiful outdoor space that is easy to take care of and beneficial to the local ecosystem.

Native plant lawns, for example, are a great option if you want something beautiful that will attract local wildlife. As an integral part of local ecosystems, native plants provide shelter and sustenance for animals and pollinators. Plus, native plant lawns are far easier to care for than other types of yards with grass or non-native plants. They require less maintenance — meaning less time spent watering and weeding.

Users recommended ideas for the OP to still enjoy sunchokes without allowing them to take over the garden.

One suggested planting them in a different spot, "as far away from the garden as possible."

Another gardener shared how they keep sunchokes at bay, writing: "After learning what they could do, [I] kept mine potted. I just harvested a big wash pan worth just from two plants."

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