Amaranth

Amaranth is two crops in one plant, and most gardeners who try it make the mistake of choosing too late which one they want. If you harvest the young leaves for greens, you won't get grain. If you let the plant grow to maturity for seed, the leaves turn tough and bitter by midsummer. The decision needs to be made at planting — some rows for leaves, some rows left to go to seed.

Direct-sow one week after your last frost date, when the soil has warmed to at least sixty degrees. The seeds are tiny — mix them with sand before sowing to avoid clumping — and they germinate quickly in warm soil, usually within a week. Thin seedlings to eighteen inches apart if you're growing for grain; closer spacing works for leaf production, but crowded plants tend to bolt faster.

For greens, harvest the top six to eight inches of tender growth when plants are young, before flower heads form. The leaves are tender and taste somewhere between spinach and chard, with none of the bitterness that spinach develops in hot weather. Once the plant starts forming a flower spike, leaf quality drops sharply — the texture turns fibrous and the flavor becomes astringent. This is where most gardeners lose the greens harvest: they wait too long, thinking the plant will keep producing like lettuce, and by the time they cut it, the leaves are no longer worth eating.

If you're growing for grain, let the plants stand until the seed heads turn from bright color to brown and start to feel dry when you squeeze them. The timing matters. Harvest too early — when the heads are still slightly damp — and the seed may mold during drying. Wait too long, and birds will strip the heads in a single afternoon. The sweet spot is when the heads rattle slightly when shaken and a few seeds fall out when you rub them between your palms.

Cut the entire seed head, hang it upside down in a dry, well-ventilated space for a week or two, then thresh by rubbing the heads over a bucket. Winnow the chaff outdoors on a breezy day or use a fan — the tiny seeds are lighter than most grains and easier to separate. Properly dried amaranth grain stores for months in a sealed jar and can be popped like miniature popcorn, cooked as a hot cereal, or ground into flour.

Amaranth is drought-tolerant once established and handles poor soil better than most grains, but it does produce more seed in soil that has had compost worked in. The plants tend to self-sow enthusiastically if you let any seed heads shatter on the ground — this can be a feature or a problem depending on your garden layout.