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Burdock Japanese Gobo Arctium Lappa Seeds
Packet of 50+ freshly harvested home grown seeds!
We tried a heap of the more common burdock varieties available in Australia over the years and long story short, we were never really very happy with either the plants or the resulting crop.
Poor germination, slow growth, cut-worm dramas, aphid dramas, borer dramas, water use dramas. Months of work for a handful of woody runted twisted rubbish. We just never really had a decent success with any of them so we gave up on the entire species.
It was only when we were in Japan visiting the inlaws that the awesome earthy taste made us decide to have another crack at them, but in a bit more of a determined manner.
This particular variety is the most productive of all the ones we brought back to trial, and although it has a much shorter root than some other types, for us here that is really an advantage. Our Aussie soils are not meters of beautiful black loam with plenty of moisture like you commonly get in Japan. Here it is rocky dry rubble with a very thin crust of decent top soil spread very thinly here and there.
The growth of this fella is fast and vigorous, no insect dramas except for the odd grasshopper chewing the odd leaf, and by 3-6months the roots are pretty much perfect to eat as a vegetable. My rule of thumb is aim for thicker than one finger, but not quite as thick as two fingers. If you leave them longer they get huge and eventually sort of woody and at that stage they can be sliced thinly and dried to make a great tea.
Earthy, almost mushroomy, full of minerals and trace elements, I’m a big fan.
The flowers look awesome and despite the pods looking nasty and kinda thistle-like, the “spines” are actually little soft hooks that were the original inspiration for velcro. They gently hook and cling to skin and clothing instead of spiking you, and they don’t dislodge from the plants stems to get carted around everywhere which is handy too.
As we have been only growing this selection for a few years there may still be a little genetic instability so make sure you keep the bestest of the best plants to save seeds from. By doing this you are adapting it to your own specific climatic conditions meaning a better tuber crop year after year.
Grown by us organically, no nasties, no chems, no problems!!!
