the first sunchoke tubers this season

i have been a bit concerned about the behavior of the jerusalem artichokes this season and since one or two had begun to die back i decided to see what sort of production i was going to find..so i went out to campus this morning and popped one up...it wasn't more than three-and-a-half feet tall but it yielded twenty good sized tubers...doing a quick ( and unscientific ) extrapolation with the thirty odd plants still in the ground and i should get in the neighborhood of six hundred tubers which isn't what yield has been in the past...but those plants were much bigger, bloomed later in the season , and died back later as well...there won't be any sunchokes in the pgp next season..hopi blue maize will take their place bordering a bed of perennial grain...it will be up to the colony in my back yard to provide future clues into the plant's behavior...i have cleaned the fist batch up and they are soon going to be lunch...which is why i planted them...local lunch forma native plant...food security in a minor form...a gateway.