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Members Experiments

Amaranth as a crop for a changing climate

We're doing a study of the vegetable amaranth from April to October in order to find out what you like about it - and whether you think it's a crop worth growing in our changing climate.

Log your results

Please log your amaranth results here.

Background

Amaranth is widely grown in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean from tropical to temperate climes. The vegetable, also known as Chinese spinach or callaloo, can be grown both as a crop for seed and a crop for leaves. Its leaves are highly nutritious, containing a wide range of amino acids, calcium, magnesium and antioxidants.

It's grown extensively by multicultural communities in the UK, particularly Jamaican, Gujarati and Bangladeshi communities - but most UK growers are not so familiar with the crop.

We'd like to find out what you think of it and whether it's a good crop to grow in our increasingly warming climate in the UK. It's important we grow a more diverse range of crops to spread the risk from unpredictable weather conditions and pressure from pests and diseases.

Aims

The main focus of this experiment is:

  1. To test whether people enjoy growing and eating amaranth, and think it's a crop worth cultivating.
  2. To compare the performance of three different varieties that have become adapted to our climate. We collected these varieties from communities and allotment growers between 2011-2016.
  3. We're also going to ask people to have a go at characterising their varieties.

Garden Organic last evaluated amaranth with its members in 2013, but more productive varieties have since been collected that we would like to evaluate.

Timescale

April – October

Sign up deadline 30th March

Space required

3 x 1 m plots

Materials needed

We will provide seeds and protocols

What is the commitment?

1 hour to set up trial, then 20 minutes a month for assessments.

Please view the members experiment protocol here.