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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-705
Grain Amaranth
Amaranthus cruentus
Grain amaranth produces a nutrient-dense pseudo-grain and an edible leaf from the same planting, harvesting leaves like spinach for up to eight months while the seed heads ripen behind them. The seed is unusually rich in protein and lysine, and can be popped, toasted, ground into flour or boiled into porridge, while the deep taproot pulls minerals up from the subsoil and the cut plant makes strong cattle feed. It thrives in hot, sheltered, full-sun conditions across a wide temperature range but is killed outright by any frost, and it should not be eaten fresh off nitrogen-rich or heavily fertilised ground, since it concentrates nitrate in its leaves under those conditions.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–10
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate · Moist
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 4.3–7.5
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 6–8 ft
- Mature spread
- Not yet recorded
- Plant spacing
- 15–24 in
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi & H.Ohashi
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African Eggplant
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Agrimony
Agrimonia eupatoria
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Alfalfa
Medicago sativa
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Aloe Vera
Aloe vera
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Alsike Clover
Trifolium hybridum
Alsike Clover fixes nitrogen in wet, acid ground too cold and heavy for red clover to thrive in, and its flowers keep bees working all season…
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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