Are you referring to Orach (Atriplex hortensis)? and you gorge on it raw? How does it taste cooked? I assume Similar to Lambsquaters (Chenopodium album) right?
Wait what!? Some are specifically bred to pop!? Does that mean all Amaranthus species can theoretically pop like Popcorn too?
Be careful and make sure you aren’t using any Chemical (Artificial) Fertilizer where your Amaranths are growing because Amranths are known to concentrate high levels of Nitrates in the entire plant (I theorize this is because it doesn’t form strong fungal connections (Endo/Ecto Mycorrhizal Connections) which in other plants acts as a protective barrier/filter).
That’s what this PFAF Page on Amaranthus hybridus says. No Amranth is Poisonous, at worse some may just have Lots of oxalates (Which Cooking Takes care of).
Could the Giant Chenopodium be Good King Henry by any chance (Chenopodium bonus-henricus)?
Yes i refer to orach, which i love to cook. I préfèr the texture over spinach. Spinach doesn’t do summers.
Great resource Thomas!
I’ve separated some seeds. It was much easier than i’d imagined.
Hardly took a minute.
They do pop as well, but not all at the same time, and thé température of the pan was very high. Maybe those spécial popping zones are interesting to obtain. If they pop a bit sooner at lower temps and all of them. Only one way to find out!
I’m much more interested in grain crops that leaf. In the subtropics I usually have too many leaves to choose from, and amaranth is a low priority of the range whether cooked or raw (cooking only reduces oxalate but doesnt eliminate it, and cooking leaves destroys most of the reasons to eat them). Celosia tips are very tender, but the mature leaves are good too (but fiddlier to harvest). The bushes resprout extensively when tip pruned, so tips are the better way to harvest the plant. Seed production is considerable, but there is no historic record of people eating whole celosia seed so I suspect it is problematic (while there are records of people pressing oil from the seed).
Amaranth is a rare plant around here outside of gardens with imported soil. I only see them very rarely even in my improved/disturbed vegetable gardens. That leads me to conclude there is something about our geology that doesnt favour the genus. By contrast, Celosia grows in my hedge rows without any assistance. Chenopodium also seems to be disfavoured by our soil geology. I only ever see C. album growing on charcoal/ash/goat manure piles in my veggie gardens. I dont think this has anything to do with microbial balance. The whole bacterial/fungal dominance concept is also a gross oversimplification. I don’t feel the need to explain anything since it doesnt change the soil beneath my feet. I just grow whatever likes the soil I already have. You can get away with enriching soil for vegetables, but for staple crops that need to be grown on larger scales all those amendments don’t work at scale.
Huh, So spinach is a cool season crop, like many Mustards, Peas, Chickweeds, etc.
How so? Did you just cut the Top heavy Fruit part of the plant off, and smack it with a stick to thresh out the seeds? Or is shaking more than enough?
According to this site, you need to place a Lid over it & Popping Amaranth requires more exact temperature, like a Goldilocks zone. Also how do they taste in your Opinion?
Interesting, but the question is how much Cooking reduces how many Oxalates? I’ve always just boiled Amaranth Greens so that must’ve been enough to not cause problems.
Interesting, PFAF also mentioned an oil can be obtained from the seeds. Thank you for bringing me more valuable Knowledge about Celosia!
Indeed it is, it’s what happens when you try to fit it in a Nutshell.
There is indeed a lot to Learn about it. Don’t know if you heard of Matt Powers but he’s been studying this with enthusiasm. Question, do you cover your soils with mulch or use compost teas (Or is it too much land to cover/spread)? I also agree for staple crops, you need them Reliable AF, like the weeds.
I like Matt Powers work. It was interesting to see how much he relied on wild foraged winged yams during his experiment year of growing his own staple crops. They need a lot more time and scale than veggies to cover a whole diet, which means you can’t afford to baby them much at all.
John Kempf had a podcast a while ago about the redox spectrum of soil as another axis on top of pH etc. The way I look at soil there are hundreds of intertangled factors that you can tinker with, or you can just do variety trials on the soil you naturally have and find what works without interventions.
I have one scaled up system working well using Inga alleys to fix N/C/bring up subsurface minerals. It generates a lot of mulch but I usually push it back while establishing crops. Direct sowing crops is difficult with heavy mulch. As long as the system maintains sufficient total photosynthesis bare soil can be tolerated for brief periods on small scales (functioning natural ecosystems have a patchwork of bare soil as well that create opportunities for seed germination). I am planning on creating another system based on Canna as both a biomass and staple starch crop, which can be periodically cleared to grow other higher demand crops like cucurbits and legumes, but it will take a few years to get it off the ground. It will be interesting to see if nitrogen will be an issue here. For those crops excess nitrogen can easily become a problem.
In my vegetable garden I use no mulch or irrigation. I just mound up the topsoil from my paths onto my growing beds, and top dress with charcoal and a little goat manure. I do all my weed management with a hoe or a hand sickle, and generally manage weeds like volunteer green manure crops.
Very Interesting! Another Topic to look into, Thank you!
Solid Advise, I’m gonna do both. Does it make sense to say you landrace the Plants, and the Plants Landrace the Soil Life?
That’s what I was thinking about, Unless your Mulch is also Compost which would create the best situation, like how Paul Gochi used the rich soil his Chicken produce. Have you also heard of Chicken Tractor on Steroids by Permapastures farm? It feels like generating Compost is a lot easier with Animals around. Also does the mulch system make more sense with transplants rather than Direct Sowing?
Kokopelli has even more amaranths (34): Plants of amaranth | Association Kokopelli
From different species… The strains I have are Opopeo, Népalaise, New-Mexico, Intense Purple, Alegria, Golden Giant, Burgundy + a red foxtail with black seeds. From cruentus and hypocondriachus species. @VeggieSavage :
yes I suppose too that some are bred to pop. I tried one time but wasn’t convinced due to different popping times… But I guess it was a mix of different strains…
I do not use nitrogen but thanks for the info. That corresponds to amaranths bio-indication: excess in nitrogen in the soil / destruction of the organo-minral complex. (Edit: https://www.promonature.com/les-amarantes-exces-de-potasse-ou-dazote.html just reading to the best author on the subject in Europe, he says that the amaranth group as a whole when its dominant is bioindicating an excess of Nitrogen OR potash in springtime, and LACK of nitrogen or potash in autumn)
I’m pretty sure D. alata is the main edible escapee in Florida. D. bulbifera is also around but not all clones are equallly edible. D. alata is my main productive species here, but I have a half dozen other species in my collection. Cross pollinating them is a pain, but I might get back to attempting it one day. Genetics is very very limited in Australia since we can only easily import seed and almost no productive forms are propagated that way.
Soil biology does definitely change over time in response to the plants growing on it, and a species that is well suited today might be outcompeted in time. I don’t see it as a linear progression from bad to good, from disturbance to climax, rather a constant cycle that humans have to be a critical part of in the absence of a functional set of megafauna.
I top dress “compost” (uncomposted goat manure) in my vegetable garden, but only because my goat shed is right beside it and I have to clean it out to some degree. If I had to cart it longer distances it wouldnt be worth it. Ash is much more nutrient dense and lightweight, so i will carry it further. Maybe one day I will do so routinely for certain staple crops like legumes and cucurbits, where one strong root system suppoprts a large hungry plant. I don’t like using transplants as I find you invariably end up with a weaker root system compared to direct sowing. It also involves a hell of a lot more work per plant. Mulch doesnt have to be evenly distributed over the growing space to still be useful. I pile my charcoal and goat manure down the middle of my growing beds (deep enough to suppress weed growth there) and direct sow along the edges where it isn’t too deep. Then I leave my paths mostly bare for weeds to grow on as a volunteer green manure that I slash or hoe a few times through the growing season. The weedy material gets piled up on the paths, so maybe 20% of it becomes harder for weeds to reestablish in during the growing season. It breaks down into nice composty topsoil that I hoe onto the beds the next growing season.
Raw I don’t like them at all. Very unpleasant mouth-feel. Cooked they are ok when young, as mentioned, especially with a bit of lemon juice and some chilli flakes. Not much flavour otherwise. I’ve never tried quinoa. I think lambsquarters are what we call fathen. If so, then they are very tasty. We eat a lot of those in spring and early summer. We collect the seed and chuck it around here and there. I add it to our early spring green manure mix too.
I remember David The Good did a video on D. alata, I’ve always considred it toxic unless you a specificly non toxic cultivar. It’s weird how that works, does this then open the door to other toxic dioscorea species being domesticated thus turning off the toxcity? Also is dioscoreae hybridization more scary than cucurbita? Cucurbita has obvious bitter taste if toxic, but the same can’t be said about dioscorea thus making it scary!
Doesn’t it all boil down to balance? For example A little disturbance hear & there is nothing Nature can’t deal with but mass tilling is bad? Cuz I was thinking of tilling for the sole purpose of bringing up new weed seeds (AKA New Potential with Locally adapted Varients of Lambsquaters, Amaranths, Black Nighshades, etc) since so many soils have seedbanks just sitting there waiting for someone to till that soil.
This is very smart, basically chop & drop, which seems more applicable to larger scales.
I see, I like Mild Greens. I can see amaranth being mixed with Basil, Kale, Lambsquaters, Arugula all cooked into a delicious cooked greens meal. Also have you tried the rapidly growing stalks/stems of Tender amaranths? I’ve heard Foragers use them as Asparagus substitutes.
Subtle toxins in Dioscorea plus more challenging hybridisation and limited starting diversity was one reason I have up on breeding the genus here. I have one population grown from seed (sold as alata, but probably hamiltonii) that is producing seed itself. I will have to try eating the tubers to check they are edible, then I might consider returning to the idea of hand crossing them with my limited other edible clones to see if I can restore fertility.
Yams have all sorts of weird cultural practices in west Africa. Strains are expected to lose vigor over time in cultivation. They are put back into unmanaged situations to restore their strength, then undergo a “ennobling” process where they are grown in a special hole with a flat stone at the bottom to “train” the yam to produce shorter/wider tubers. All of this suggests a manipulation of the plant microbiome and epigenetics that scientists wouldn’t know where to begin to study.
Scale is a huge part of the impact of humans. Small fields surrounded by managed forests can be tilled with lower risk of erosion. Small patches cleared or hoed inside that space even more. The way moving water gains destructive momentum in the landscape means scale is critical. The behavior of fire is very similar in many ways (good luck controlled burning a 1000 acre uniform forest versus small stands in a patchwork of grassland and marshes).
Weeds in my system are very much volunteer green manure plants. The mix of weeds is constantly adapting to changing conditions as well without me having to do a thing (other than knocking them back at the right time to get the biggest net benefit).
Dry bones arise.
Hello, Jessic here.
I will be stewarding Amaranth this year and i have about 17 varietys of grain amaranth across 3 different species.
From the congo, canada, central and south america.
This blend has been picked up by Tennessee State University for their breeding project and by the president of the Amaranth Institute.
I am working with a local farm to extend the season so i can make available to everyone the seeds for this upcoming year.
If you have any grain amaranth you would like to donate to add with this please do.
Is your amaranth seed going to GTS for distribution? Id like to grow them out here in Arizona. Ive grown the red dye variety and an unknown green. Didnt get much seed, but the leaves were good to eat, cooked.
I’m not far from Baltimore, what a Small World indeed haha.
Awesome! Take some Pictures, share with us what you find! If there’s a plant you don’t know, don’t hesitate to send a Photo & ask, I can help out with Plant ID!
Interesting, I’ve heard others say Amaranth Greens don’t taste good, even after cooking. I’m glad to know you have a difference experience as Leafy Amaranth is something I want to breed for.
There are amaranth varieties cultivated for tasty leaves. Most cultivars focus on the grain aspect and I should start as well. The leaves taste closer to spinach and can be dehydrated and powdered too. Im accustomed to eating dark greens with a mix of kale, arugala, zucchini, onion, garlic, corriander and paprika…and always search for recipes for soups. Lots of Asain cuisine uses different green leaves too. Kitazawa seed company is now part of True Leaf…with the seed catalog including recipes throughout its pages.
