Photos of Quinoa Flowering in my garden

[897tgigvib]

This is my first try at growing Quinoa, and so far so good.

This variety is called Colorado Quinoa

 

[ninnymary]

Amazing, I've never seen photos of quinoa. When will it be ready to harvest?

Mary

 

[897tgigvib]

That's a good question. Since I'm mostly protected from birds I should be able to wait until it looks ripe, golden starting and all. But I'll pick a few flowers, the micro flowers, to check if they are making seeds.

Quinoa is touchy about temperature and pollen, and it has been hot. Supposedly this variety is more tolerant of heat.

 

[nittygrittydirtdigger]

Wow, I hadn't seen the plant before either. It's so pretty! I'm going to try some next year. If I don't like it, the chickens will.

 

[canesisters]

What is it? I've never heard of it before. Lovely though.

 

[desertlady]

awesome! How big is this plant? is it easy to grow?

 

[vfem]

They are beautiful! (And yummy!)

How much do you have to grow to get a good supply to keep for cooking?

 

[897tgigvib]

I actually don't know how much needs to be grown for cooking. I have one patch that's about 2 feet by 5 feet. There are so many ways to use Quinoa that is almost impossible to give a single answer. For salad leaves 5 to 10 plants well grown might be enough. I've been "garden munching" some of the tender new leaves and theybut are good raw. For grain to grind, I'm thinking a patch 4 foot by 10 foot would yield enough to grind into flour. As flour, there are recipes to use it pure, but mixed with wheat flour 50/50 most wheat flour recipes can be used. Just guessing, but the leavening time might need adjusting. As seed nuts this particular variety might not be good, at least going by the size of the seeds in the packet I planted. Colorado Quinoa's seeds are smaller than other varieties, probably not good for popping or braising.

Quinoa, well the pronunciation is all hoity toity and is actually based on a mistake! Yet gourmet enthusiasts jump up and down correcting the pronunciation of it. KEEN-WAH. When the folks who came in after the Conquistadors actually looked at the humans they conquered, they saw what their foods were. Potatoes, Beans, Corn...this was down in south america in the andes...Tomatoes, and at first something they thought looked like weeds. So they kind of ignored the weedy looking stuff. For some reason this weedy looking stuff was the most revered. The head Chief of a village led the annual seed planting of it. When the europeans finally asked what it was called, they also asked the name of the village. Then they took some seeds back to Spain. When they got to Spain they could not pronounce the name of this vegetable, so they decided to name it after the village, BUT THEY EVEN PRONOUNCED THE VILLAGE NAME ALL WRONG! They left out syllables, spelled it with a Q at the start, in Spanish, and generally messed the naming of it all up.

Quinoa is in the Chenopodiaceae family along with Beets, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Amaranth, and Pigweed, Orach, Spreen, and actually many others.

Beets and Swiss Chard, and Mangels and Sugar Beets are all in the same species of this family, commonly called the Goosefoot family.

Quinoa, Pigweed, and probably Orach and Spreen are all in their same respective species of this family too. (Which means they can cross if they really are in the same biologically defined species).

=======

Quinoa grows in an architectural form similar to Amaranth. If you don't know Amaranth, I can compare its growth to being similar to a shorter variety of Sunflower.

Quinoa makes a central stalk that grows upward. Colorado Quinoa seems to grow to 6 feet tall. The plants tend to begin a lean, at least in my garden circumstance. Next year my plan is to grow more varieties of it, providing this variety does produce seed. I will "corral" the patches by staking and twining around the perimeter. Beans do grow up them well, but tend to pull the plant to a greater lean. So I think it'd probably be good to plant Beans near the perimeter plants with the corral in place, and let the beans pull some perimeter plants downward a little to allow more light to the middle of the patch. Light is of the essence in my forest garden.

The plant itself is easy to grow. Seems to enjoy fertile soil. By the time the hot of summer arrives, they do seem to become thirstier. Don't let them wilt much. As I understand, the pollen is fragile, and will not pollinate if too hot or too cold. Quinoa is a HIGH ALTITUDE altiplano EQUATORIAL plant that evolved to live less than 250 miles from the coast of western South America. This variety was selected since 1985 by some folks in Colorado to be more tolerant to more growing conditions. Those people who did this lost a friend who went to Peru in the 1970's to find the mysterious Quinoa. Their friend was mysteriously killed getting this seed. Another friend was lost, and finally made his way out, but he was all post traumatic syndromed, and was talking about a curse. Seed Explorers. That can be dangerous work. He had to have that curse removed by a shaman.

I got the seed for this from Bountiful Gardens in Willits.

 

[so lucky]

Marshal, It's so much more interesting to get your colorful and abreviated history/explanation of stuff than to pull out the encyclopedias or surf the net. thanks!
I think Quinoa in the store looks like little pearls--maybe that is what the whole seed looks like? I believe I have prepared it, can't remember for certain if it was Quinoa or something else. It was kind of like a mix between rice and cornmeal, very fine looking like tapioca.

 

[ducks4you]

Agreed. Happy to learn!