Pigheaded for Pigweed

One of the limiting factors in turning an urban homestead into a completely self-sufficient ecological niche is the fact that most grain crops require an inordinate amount of space.  In fact, this is part of why organic cereal crops are so rare – the investment of time and space involved in raising grain crops is substantial, and most farmers who are interested in organics are also interested in saving money.  They therefore opt for less spatially intensive products, like fruits and vegetables, or eggs, or dairy.

So, those of us trying to scratch out an edible living on a half-acre in the city are left holding the empty cereal bag.

Which is why we are curious about a new possibility.  Our research on world foods has led us to an admiration of the staple of the Inca diet, a little pseudocereal called quinoa.  Foodies have long been familiar with quinoa, but it is not part of the general public’s culinary vernacular, and with good reason.  Although this is almost the perfect grain – the approximation of complete proteins in quinoa is closer than in any other starchy crop besides the potato – it is also very clearly a specialty crop.

The outer covering of the quinoa grain is heavily laced with saponins, which give it an exceedingly bitter flavor.  This is bad news for anyone who wants to eat it raw, of course, but good news for farmers who have to worry about avian intrusions.  Birds do not poach a quinoa harvest the way they do with corn or even wheat.

“But Myrtle,” you may be asking, “why would we want to eat something at which the birds turn up their prim little noses?”

Good question.  The answer?  You don’t have to eat quinoa with the saponins still attached, silly goose.  You soak it before cooking it.  Most boxed quinoa you might find at your local grocery store will come pre-soaked to remove the saponin content for you.  Those of us who are used to soaking our pinto or black beans prior to cooking will not find this extra step all that tedious.

So, well and good, we have established that there is this grain which is bird-proof and high in protein.  How do you grow it, and what do you use it for?

These are excellent questions, and unfortunately, this is where our research takes a bit of a left turn off the expected path.  Being a native of the Andes mountain range, as you might expect, Quinoa prefers weather a tad more temperate than what we experience on the Texas coastal plain.  There are some successful quinoa producers in Colorado and New Mexico, but we fear if we were to try the plant in any serious sort of way, we would have to limit ourselves to fall and winter production, and even then, the growing season might not be long enough before the return of hot weather, sometimes as early as late March, never later than mid-May.  Quinoa takes a while to reach maturity, and we just don’t have the pleasant cool weather you find in Peru or Ecuador.

However, never being prone to dispair for long, we continued to dig after hearing these discouraging words, and we found that there is a relative of quinoa called “pigweed” which was cultivated in North America until as recently as the middle of the 18th century.  In fact, in Mexico, it is still being raised as a cash-crop.

Known variously as “pigweed”, “pitseed”, “goosefoot”, “huauzontle”, or “lambsquarters”, Chenopodium berlandieri is an annual herbaceous plant widely regarded as a weed.  However, several varieties are grown for food, utilizing different characteristics of the plant, which has many characteristics of the better known Chenopodium album or, of course, its relative with which the conversation got started, Chenopodium quinoa.  Varieties of pigweed are grown for the broccoli-like seed heads; other varieties are grown for grain; still others are grown because the leaves of the plant are much like spinach.

Quinoa is almost exclusively grown at altitude, although we suspect it might thrive at lower elevations provided the other climate requirements were met.  However, we are more likely to experiment with the other Chenopodiae simply because we suspect we will have more success with them.

While scrounging for information about what grain crops we might reasonably expect to be able to grow at our altitude and in our hardiness zone, we stumbled upon another pseudocereal which, like quinoa and pigweed, is far more nutritious and versatile than the more popular wheat and corn alternatives.  Amaranth is, like the Chenopodiae, considered a weed by most American farmers.  However, in most of the rest of the world, and more particularly, in those parts of the world where drought in spite of high humidity is a very real concern, Amaranthacea Celosia is considered a wonder crop.  The leaves and flowers are edible, tasting much like spinach, and the seed is another lysine-rich close-to-complete protein food.  And in some quarters, amaranth, like lambsquarters, is called "pigweed" because it only grows where the pigs forage!

Amaranth seeds were popular with Native Americans from the plains states; in Mexico, you can still see a candy made with amaranth grain called alegría at festivals in some communities; in India, amaranth is called rajgira and is served popped and mixed with jaggery (a south Asian sugar) to form a dish called laddus, which is a staple in school cafeterias throughout the subcontinent.  And in sub-Saharan Africa, farmers are viewing amaranth as manna from heaven, because many of their traditional crops are failing with increased climate change induced variability in the local weather patterns; amaranth thrives in conditions other grain crops abhor, which goes a long way to explaining how several varieties have taken hold in the U.S. as pernicious weeds, resistant to many herbicides.

And like another crop we have come to appreciate more each year, the sunflower, amaranth plants are just plain attractive.  The bright red varieties in particular have the potential to transform even a small garden plot into a vibrant, velvety canvass.  One of the chief complaints about vegetable gardens is that they lack the aesthetic sensibilities of herbs or flowers; this does not have to be true.  The inclusion of trap crops like sunflowers and nasturtiums was our introduction to this fact; now, we learn that the floral attractions can themselves be on the menu, and we are overjoyed with the discovery.

This will be part of next year’s veggie garden revamp – in the Spring, we will plant amaranth, and in the Fall, we will plant lambsquarters.  And if we can get a good grain crop out of that mix, then we’ll see what kind of homegrown breads we can turn out; Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance -- we don’t mean to brag but can’t help ourselves -- is perhaps the best baker we know.  Her challenge will be to turn out good product with nothing but what comes from our yard.  If we were tending ten acres instead of a half of one, it would be no challenge.  But, as the inimitable (if fictional) Jimmy Duggan says, “It’s the ‘hard’ that makes it great!”

Happy farming!