$1.59   Edible Red Leaf Amaranth - Heirloom

 

This heat-loving summer green is even more nutritious than spinach or beet greens! With its coleus appearance, it is showy enough for flowerbeds. With its heat tolerance, it will give you sweet and slightly tangy salad greens well into summer when your spring crops have been harvested or have bolted. Incredibly versatile, you can steam it like spinach, stir-fry it, or sauté it. Try mixing the leaves with spaghetti sauce, rice, meatloaf, or use it whenever your Chinese cookbook calls for spinach. Just like our Burgundy Amaranth (in the flower section) you can also harvest the seeds to eat as a grain. The seeds have a huge 20% protein and rank 75 out of 100 as a complete protein, which is higher than milk, soybeans, or whole wheat. The foliage is very nutritious – high in vitamin A, C, iron, calcium and protein. When to start outside: When soil temperatures are warm. It grows fastests when warm. It will germinate in cool soils, though. You have nothing to lose by early spring sowing (particularly if you are growing it for the seed grains which takes 90-110 days). When to start inside: Not recommended. It does not transplant well.