GROWING AMARANTH GREENS, A NUTRITION POWERHOUSE

A leafy green that's more nutritious than Kale learn more about Amaranth greens So there are two common types of Amaranth varieties that you can find The first type is the purple amaranth And the second variety of Amaranth is the green Amaranth you can easily buy Amaranth seeds in a lot of places and in the video description I will also provide a link where you can buy your seeds Amaranth seeds are usually started in a seed starting mix the reason being Amaranth transplants really well and being a cool season crop you can grow Amaranth indoors while your bed is preparing or your containers are being prepared Amaranth seeds take about 10 to 15 days for germination I usually leave my seeds to germinate in the green house it creates a nice humid environment and and increases the germination rate quite a lot So you can see the Amaranth seedlings towards the left I'm also growing some spinach in the same seed starting container and as you can see if they have germinated pretty well and while the seed are germinating they do not need any kind of nutrition or fertilizer till they develop their first set of leaves an Amaranth has very shallow root systems so you can even sow the seeds directly in a small container so as you can see here we are using two kinds of containers one is about a 6 inch high plastic container where you can sow the seeds directly and you will soon see towards end of this video that the Amaranth has shallow root systems so it's easy to grow them even in containers like this baking tray that you see here and you can already see that the Amaranth seedlings have now sprouted within about 10 to 15 days and it's now time for us to transplant these amaranth seedlings into bigger containers when the seedlings are about 3or 4 inches tall you can easily transplant these seedlings into a container make sure you separate out all the seedlings so that they have adequate space to grow you do not want your seedlings to be crowded around each other Now what's the big deal about growing leafy greens like Amaranth well they are a great source of Vitamin A Vitamin C they contain a lot of minerals and nutritionally they are actually better than kale which itself is a powerhouse when it comes to nutrition so growing and eating a lot of greens like Amaranth, Kale, spinach swiss chard will not only give you a very healthy mind it will also give you a very healthy body and will also let your body fight a lot of diseases now for these Amaranth seedlings I did not use a lot of fertilizer while they were growing but the potting mix that I have did have some added fertilizer in it and that was sufficient for it to provide nutrition to all these Amaranth greens that were growing so Amaranth is not a very heavy feeder but if you do not have fertilizer added to your potting mix then I would recommend that you feed your Amaranth plants with a nice liquid fertilizer every 3 weeks or so while they grow and they grow pretty fast you can expect to harvest Amaranth about thirty to forty days after you have transplanted the seedlings and as you can see the seedlings are growing pretty well here and this container is not very deep you can even use shallower containers for growing Amaranth so the Nitrogen requirements for Amaranth are pretty high which is why you would use a fertilizer like fish fertilizer or seaweed or an all-purpose fertilizer to feed your Amaranth plants So as you can see the stem have now become thicker and the leaves are growing very well and it's still not time to harvest the Amaranth Greens...we'll let them grow for just a few days before we harvest them so at this stage you can see that the plant has become a little bushy it started growing out multiple leaves from around the stem and at this stage you can go ahead and harvest your Amaranth greens and as you can see here the roots are very shallow which is what I mentioned in the beginning of this video that you can actually use containers that are not very deep for growing Amaranth so baking trays are perfect you can even grow them in shallow six-inch containers So do you go Amaranth greens? Or now that you know what Amaranth greens are would you like to try growing them in your garden? do let me know what you think and I'll see you again soon Happy Gardening!