Amaranth – My #1 Survival Crop
RedneckContributor - October 15, 2020Just joined yesterday and wanted to contribute. I’m a long time prepper, living in north Mississippi. I love to garden. I live on a 20 acre farmstead where we have 4 horses and 9 dogs. My orchard has over 150 trees… mostly apples with some peaches. I also grow blackberries, blueberries & muscadine grapes. I am by no means self sufficient but most of what I grow is what we like to eat & what I would grow in a crisis, if I did ever have to become self sufficient.
IMO, the #1 survival crop is amaranth. It is easy to grow, as for some it is a weed (Pigweed, Palmer amaranth). It handles drought extremely well & needs little, if any fertilizer. Farmers struggle to get rid of it. It was a staple food item of the Aztecs & Incas. It is a dual use plant, in that you can eat the leaves & young stems, plus each plant can produce up to a pound of nutritious seed that can be ground into flour or made into porridge. It is considered a super food, as it is absolutely loaded with protein, fiber, vitamins & minerals. The plants can grow up to 10′ tall. It loves the hot weather and in my garden, I grow it as a summer green. You can use it in most any recipe for spinach or greens. IMO, greens are great crops for survival so I grow them the whole growing season. In cool season I grow collards & kale. In the summer, I grow amaranth.
But what really makes amaranth shine as a survival food has to do with its reproduction. Each plant can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds. I will say that again… hundreds of thousands of seed. So imagine we are in a SHTF crisis and we needs lots of food fast. What other nutritious plant could produce so much food so fast and which crop could provide enough seed to feed a town within 1 generation? Just one pound of seed contains around a half million seed, so anyone can store this seed for possible use.
Yes, I grow and store all sorts of garden seed. For me, my go to survival garden crop is the three sisters… a native American way of growing corn, pole beans & winter squash. Sister corn provides support for the sister pole bean. Sister pole bean, being a legume, puts nitrogen back into the soil for the corn to use. Sister squash provides ground cover to control grass/weeds & to hold moisture in the soil. But during a crisis, when so many would be starving, I think it would be smart to provide seed for others to grow their own food. I can’t afford to provide corn or other seed for lots of families… but could sure offer amaranth.
This summer, once my amaranth plants were around 4′ tall, I harvested a bunch of leaves for my callaloo pictured above. To harvest, I cut off the top half of the plant, where the newest, most tender leaves are located. I wanted to test that if you cut such a mature plant, that new growth would arise. And yes, within a week, vigous new growth started replacing what was cut. In the pic below, you can see where the stalk was cut and see the new shoots. As I said, it only took a week to get all that new growth.
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Comments (31)
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Gideon ParkerStaff
Thank you for sharing your experience with Amaranth! I’ve never heard of it before but i’m really interested now.
I’m just barely getting into collecting heirloom seeds, and this year I started off small by growing a radish plant. I let the plant get old and it continued to grow tall. It eventually produced little pods. It continued to age and eventually it got brown and died. I still waited for the plant to dry out until the little pods could be shaken and sound like there were dried seeds inside. I broke open the pods and gathered the seeds. This is how many seeds were from one radish plant:
What does seed harvest look like for Amaranth? What steps need to go into collecting them?
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RedneckContributor
Here is a pic of the seed on amaranth. To harvest you just cut off the top of the plant & let dry. Amaranth seed comes in all sorts of color. Red is common too. If you Google it, you can learn much. It was a main food of the Aztec empire and is still eaten all over the world. In the Orient, it is called Chinese spinach.
Here is a video of a harvest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uadPFZwAWnY
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John AdamaStaff
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RedneckContributor
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RedneckContributor
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RedneckContributor
In my upper barn, I do keep a large stack of 72 cell propagation trays. Having lots of small cells would allow me to plant seed by seed, if I wanted to conserve seed and not broadcast the seed.
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RedneckContributor
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RedneckContributor
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Josh CentersContributor
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RedneckContributor
I normally prepare a bed prior to seeding but I’m sure you can just throw it out. I would think your germination rate would be lower on untilled ground. Amaranth in its natural form is a weed that easily spreads naturally. These commercial varieties have just been selected for certain traits.
I know most garden plots will reseed all by themselves if you let the seed fully ripen in the field. Here is a pic of palmer amaranth (pigweed) infesting crops. It can grow 2-4 inches a day. I’ve heard some folks call it the king of weeds. Many are now resistent to even Roundup. Those same tough traits, that make it a devil of a weed for farmers, makes it a great survival crop. You almost can’t kill it.
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Carlotta SusannaStaff
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RedneckContributor
Not only are the leaves edible, but they are incredibly nutritious. I think most folk in the US grow them for microgreens. Speaking of microgreens, I just got done working in the garden. I have my collards growing in the bed where I had amaranth. When I went out there today, the whole bed is full of red amaranth shoots… many thousands of them. I thought I got the amaranth out before the seed heads had matured… but obviously not. Not only is the bed full of shoots but the garden aisles headed to the compost pile are too. Here is what the microgreens look like.
Most folks don’t realize amarnth seed can be popped, like a tiny popcorn. Like you say, the popped amaranth is used in sweet bars or porridge. The Mexicans make a bar, called Alegrias, where they add honey and sometimes nuts.
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Carlotta SusannaStaff
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RedneckContributor
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Carlotta SusannaStaff
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RedneckContributor
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Carlotta SusannaStaff
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RedneckContributor
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Gideon ParkerStaff
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RedneckContributor
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RedneckContributor
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RedneckContributor
All those little sprouts are amaranth popping up from seed that came free when removing all the amaranth that I grew this summer. Shows you how easy this plant is to grow. This bed is full of little amaranth as are the garden aisles headed to the compost pile. This cool spell we are having now should kill them off pretty soon, as they are a warm weather crop as opposed to the collards growing there now.
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RedneckContributor
When it comes down to grain, I’d say they are pretty even. Note amaranth is a seed & not a cereal grain, so it is classified as a pseudo grain. But to me what sets amaranth apart is that the whole plant is edible. Many people grow it exclusively for the edible leaves and for that reason I suggest folks trying amaranth for the first time, pick a variety with the most edible leaves. From my understand the Chinese spinach varieties have the sweetest leaves and I got in a pound of red leaf amaranth on Friday. Rareseeds calls it Chinese multicolor spinach.
I had considered growing sorghum for the grain and because it too does well in the heat. However sugarcane aphids have become a huge problem, so much so that it is almost not grown in Mississippi anymore. Only pest I know of for amaranth is a tiny flea beetle which makes small holes in the leaf. Most folks don’t worry with them, as it doesn’t kill the plant. I sprayed some spinosad, which is a great organic insecticide, and that killed all of them. Spinosad is the compound that is in those dog flea treatments where you give your dog a tablet once a month or so.
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RedneckContributor
IMO, anyone wanting to live well, post SHTF, needs a hand operated grain mill. I have two. My best is the Grain Maker model #99 and I also have a Wonder Jr Deluxe. My understanding is the Country Living mill is very nice. Seems most preppers store dried beans & rice primarily, and I too have large quantities of both in super pails but I store more wheat berries than anything… by far. If you think about it, how often do you eat rice & beans? Then ask yourself how often do you eat something made from flour? In my case, it is not even close. I might eat beans once a month & do eat more rice… maybe one a week. But wheat product? I eat that almost 3 meals a day.
Years ago, I considered growing sorghum for making syrup but realized that would take quite an investment to do so. Then I found out aphids were making it hard to grow, so I bailed on it. For sweets, I would raise bees. My neighbors have several hives in operation & I have two horozontal hives in storage.
I don’t think I’d attempt to make flour from amaranth seeds, but who knows? My first option would be to grind my field corn, as the 3 sisters are my go to survival crops… along with amaranth for greens. Corn should be much easier to grind. I keep large amounts of field corn, pole beans & winter squash seeds in super pails and add a pail every year or two. But at least with amaranth, I have the option of grinding the seeds into flour also. I have a feeling I’d use the amaranth seed more for a breakfast porridge but I like having multiple options for flour.
Here is the Grain Maker. It is built like a tank… very sturdy :
And the Wonder Jr Deluxe. Cheaper & not as well made.
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M. E.Contributor
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