Plant · P-702

Tartary Buckwheat

Fagopyrum tataricum

Tartary buckwheat is a fast-growing annual grain crop that doubles as a green manure, covering bare ground within weeks and pulling phosphorus up from deep in the soil for whatever follows it. The seed is cooked whole as a cereal, sprouted, or milled into flour, and its shallow, long-blooming flowers draw heavy visits from bees and other pollinating insects. The surprise is how narrow its heat window is: nights above about 26 C during flowering can make it abort nearly all its seed, so it performs best sown as a quick crop between the last frost and the start of summer heat rather than through the hottest months.