Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

Depending on where you live Becky it would be smart to get the best variety for your place. There are quite a few. The old Inca's had many named varieties. Living in Ireland I was lucky to get some seed from 5 different varieties that had been grown in England for a while (also not too warm and rather wet even if Ireland is wetter and colder). I put all varieties together and worked on with the best plants and seed from there.

 

The best results I had with rather strongly yellow-brown colored seeds. Quinoa belongs to the goose- foot family that has a few notorious weeds in it and they hybridize if you don't get rid of those weeds.

 

It does not self seed under my conditions so I start in a green house in trays with about one hundred cells. We use our own compost to fill the cells then pop in 2 seeds in each cell. When tall enough we plant out 20 cm apart with 30 cm between rows. By now this years plants have filled the space completely you could leave a bit more space but under our conditions that usually leads to wind damage. Average the plants are 90 cm (3 feet) high and the seed heads are just beginning to turn color from green to yellow or red. When that color change is complete for a seed head it is cut off and dried for a few days then treshed by hand by simple rubbing through a kitchen colander.

 

The harvest is not homogenous, meaning that not all plants mature at the same rate or that even on the same plant the side shoots mature later than the top of the plant. This means that the harvest takes place by hand over maybe three weeks. Not a big problem for a small holder without a tractor but probably the reason that experiments with big scale quinoa growing in Ireland of a hundred years ago stopped. If you harvest with machines you are bound to get less than a quarter compared to harvesting by hand ( 300 grams per plant regularly)

 

Occa (small yellow or reddish tubers high in oxalic acid take boiling, discarding of cooking water then stir fry) grow without problem even in shade. Tubers start forming late in the season so we harvest as late as possible. After the leaves die off because of cold.

 

Mashua (Tropaeiolum tuberosum) is a climber of which leaves and flowers are good in salads. The tubers are very aromatic and suppress male libido. Dig up and keep frost free until spring.

 

Yaccon (Polymnia sonchifolia) is off the sun flower family. Very sweet huge tubers, tasting more like a fruit than a tuber, contain inulin. We start these late April from the little tubers (not edible, tough and resinous but they have the eyes that turn into new plants) at the base of the stems in the green house in pots. The big storage tubers can be kept in a root cellar for almost a full year here without deterioration. We plant out in May and by September- October the plants can be more than man high, very bushy and with plentiful flowers that I've never known to give seed.

Harvest as late as possible just before the first frost by careful digging up the roots. They are under sap tension and can snap like a whip (just the sound of) when handled too rough. I've known one plant to give ten kilos of edible tubers. Store frost free.

john

Quinoa is really good, and I would appreciate any tips you might have for growing it. It'd be great to hear more about the others, too!

 

Thanks,

Becky Jean French

> I'm sure of it Phil. Many Andes plants do very well here in Ireland. For
> example potatoes, occa, mashua, quinoa, yaccon and others.
> john
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