Amaranthus Caudatus is one of the new seeds we tried growing this year. I took some photos of some of ours today so I thought I’d throw up a blog post with some information about this lovely plant.

Known as ‘Love Lies Bleeding’, amaranthus caudatus is a beautiful, edible, annual amaranth plant that can grow up to 8 feet high (our largest is only about 2.5 ft high so far). We LOVE seeing this in our garden. We’ve got some growing in our herb spiral and randomly throughout other vegetable and flower beds on the property. 

It took us a bit of time to get our surviving amaranth plants to this stage. We started all of our seeds indoors and they were doing great until we transplanted them outside and the slugs got them. A few of those first transplants survived and are growing well now, but our largest plants were the ones that we left inside the longest (continuing to pot up into larger pots), only transplanting them outside a couple weeks ago. 

According to Wikipedia, there are approximately 60 different varieties of amaranth. Chris and I regularly buy amaranth grain and eat it in the same dishes we use other grains (quinoa, millet, etc) for. Amaranth plants are highly valued for their edible leaves, grains, and for their ornamental qualities (we haven’t tried eating ours yet, but we’re definitely appreciating their ornamental beauty!). 

We used Renee’s Garden seeds for this variety. Renee’s Garden seeds can be purchased locally from our friends at Grow & Gather (previously known as Trice Pond and Garden supplies) on Dewdney Truck Rd. near 246th street. It’s a great addition to the garden. I recommend trying it!