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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-708
Palmer Amaranth
Amaranthus palmeri
Palmer amaranth is a fast-growing warm-season annual whose leaves are cooked like spinach and whose seed is toasted, boiled into porridge or ground into flour, with a complete protein profile that ranks among the best of any leaf crop. It grows explosively - over three inches a day at its peak - and a single female plant can set half a million seeds, which is why it is treated as a serious agricultural weed and is banned outright in several states. Its deep taproot pulls minerals up from the subsoil, but the same trait means it can build up nitrate to dangerous levels on nitrogen-rich ground, so foliage from heavily fertilised plants should not be eaten or fed to stock.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 6–12
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- Not yet recorded
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 3–10 ft
- Mature spread
- 2.3–4.8 ft
- Plant spacing
- Not yet recorded
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi & H.Ohashi
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Agrimony
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Alfalfa
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Aloe Vera
Aloe vera
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Amaranth Greens
Amaranthus tricolor
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Angelica
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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