Edible Weeds: Amaranth (various Amaranth species)
Amaranth is a big genus and many common food plants fall under its umbrella. Its actually a botanic Family of its own nowadays and common edibles such as Spinach, Beet, Quinoa, Samphies and Saltbushes are included in this happy bunch. In fact, anything that was under 'Chenopodiaceae' is now included.
Amaranths are used far and wide as food crops for their seeds (e.g. Quinoa) and leaves (e.g. Spinach and Chard). For this post, though, we'll only look at those garden and weed plants that are called 'Amaranth'.
It is the beautiful flower spikes that endear many people to Amaranths - the one that springs to mind first is Amaranthus caudatus, which goes by the evocative common name of 'Love Lies Bleeding'. Its red leaves and flowers brighten many a garden. This one is not too tasty though.
In our area, A. caudutus is a garden escapee and is beginning to form a pretty, red understory beneath the Castor Oil plants that grow along the nearby creek.
Green Amaranth (Amaranthus virdis) is a common weed around where we live, especially at this time of year. We eat the leaves and include the seeds on salads. It is so common that one or two plants always end up in our garden and somehow escape the tender mercies of the chickens, so we don't even consciously plant it - its just there.
Being a weedy species, it can get by with no attention at all, but rewards us with beautiful leaves when given the same watering as the rest of the garden.
In the pic above, you can see a 'Leaf Amaranth' that came from a pack in an Asian grocery store. I have no more details than that, but it grows a good two metres tall and provodes lots of large leaves that, when raw, remind me of celery in taste.
I'd forgottten that I'd planted this one until we moved our outside Christmas tree and it had been growing up inside in this 40°C heat! That's tough!
There you go, Amaranth, a distinctive edible weed that you can surprise your dinner guests with!
This is original content, the pics were taken in our garden today by yours truly.
Find out more about edible weeds on our blog, Ligaya.
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Love this plant! We got given a few unknown varieties that we introduced and they have started to naturalize. Great to add to a salad, or just green manure/mulch. Really don't mind them coming up in the garden beds in bulk. there can be thousands in a few square meters from one previous plants dropped seed and they can easily just be chopped and dropped when the time is right to plant something else. Many times we'll take a stalk full of seed and go for a walk shaking it around..
Thanks to this article and photos we have clarified some of them as virdis and caudutus! We also have a really beautiful silver one.
Youre rightvabout the seeds. Id love to have them as an annual self seeded mulch, but the chooks have other ideas
Id be interested in seeing a pic of the silver one, if you dont mind.
Have you ever tried growing as a microgreen? It's one of my favorites as the red is almost a light pink translucent. Beautiful!
Not yet. Microgreens are in the pipeline for 2018. The red sounds interesting, so that woll be my first go. Thanks for the suggestion.
Nice post
Wish it was green here now not -20c and white.
41°C here and brown at the moment!
God. Who would call that plant weed!?!!?
I will copy paste a comment I already posted on @mountainjewel Amaranth post about 15 days ago:
I remember a teacher of my online PDC report, that he was planting millet (that I think is similar to amaranth?) randomly in his garden, to attrackt birds. They would leave their droppings, eat some insects on the way and leave other crops alone, that would be endangered to be "attacked" as well. He took it to a level, that he called millet a nitrogenfixer becaue of the ammount of nitrogen rich droppings, the birds would leave :).
Here is the video:
Thanks for sharing that, @my-permaculture! It is a great example of how we can find a resource or service thats just sitting there, doing its thing even without us knowing it.
I've always let our grain plants self seed to attract birds to work as pest control. At this time of year, everyone here is complaining about blackbirds digging up their gardens. Not me...I've realised that where I have blackbirds, I have well turned mulch and far fewer pests - our chickens could take a lesson from them!
We dont specifically grow grain crops, our space is far too small for that and needs to be put to other day ses, but we appreciate the beauty of grain plants so let them grow from birdseed and chook feed. Theyre only annuals too, so will make space for something else when the seasons changed.
HAHA!
Thank you for your answer @ligayagardener.
Great! Amaranth is surprisingly common but I had no clue you could eat it--always learning new things from #homesteadersonline!
Definitely edible. #homesteadersonline is a grest group...im alwas learning stuff or getting inspired by other members
Uhm, I thought that was marijuana lol
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