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Tucson Gothic |
One problem many of us have here in Tucson (especially those of us who aren't native Arizonans) is figuring out what kinds of plants will do well here in our arid climate and when we should plant them. Not to mention, where can we get seed for plants that thrive here in our desert home? The Burpee catalog may be fine for the East Coast, but it's not much help to us here in the Old Pueblo.

With the vernal equinox rapidly approaching, Jana and I looked at the Seed Library listings to see what we could plant this weekend. There were a lot of good choices, but we settled on a plant that has been much reviled, but that we've been fascinated with: amaranth.
Amaranth was a staple of the Aztecs and was bred for consumption by indigenous peoples throughout the Americas in the precolonial era. Like quinoa, amaranth seeds are considered a "super food" because of their high nutritional value. When the conquistadors conquered modern day Mexico, they banned the growing and consumption of amaranth because of its connection to Aztec religious ceremonies. But, fortunately, many varieties of amaranth have survived.

Last year, we transplanted some of the neighborhood amaranth into our garden in hopes of getting some young plants that we could harvest without the worry that they had been sprayed with an herbicide, but, unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and our second crop of amaranth never came in.
This year, we thought we'd try our hand with some of the cultivated varieties of amaranth, so we got some amaranth seed native to a variety of locations: New Mexico, Mexico, and Guatemala.
There is a part of our garden that hasn't been cultivated before. It was covered in gravel by the previous owner of the house and is sandy, rocky soil that gets a lot of sunlight. We figured that would be the perfect location for some amaranth, so we spent this weekend preparing our little plot to grow some weeds.
We'll let you know how it turns out!
Omg, lol.. the farmer couple pic. ;)
ReplyDeleteawesome pic you guys... but wheres the overalls? lol
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see how it turns out! ;-)
ReplyDelete