I’m looking at new things to grow for next year and found the dieta sweet Lupin from realseeds.co.uk. It look like it could be a good all purpose crop - high calorie, can be eaten fresh or dried for later, beautiful flowers and good for pollinators but not sure if this is all catalogue hype. Does anyone have any experience of this? How easy is it to grow? Is it tasty/ worth growing? Does it have value as animal feed if I don’t like it?
N.b. For those who don’t know most lupins are poisonous please only consider varieties specifically labelled as edible for consumption.
I hadn’t heard that there are sweet varieties. I did a little googling. It seems to be a plant with a lot of undeveloped potential. A little more selective breeding might make a big difference.
I wonder if there is a risk of of cross pollination from native or ornamental lupine? Hopefully the toxic types taste bad?
That’s a good point about cross pollination that I hadn’t considered. Perhaps it would be best to buy new seed each year if I decide I like it rather than saving it just in case it produces a poisonous hybrid.
I wanted to try growing it years ago but couldn't find the seed easily. The biggest dissapointment for me was it is an annual when most lupins are perrenial. So maybe its different enough not to cross pollinate too? The alkaloids are meant to be bitter so its unlikely you might poison yourself without realising!
Well I recall having seen a blog were a researcher, from ukraine i think, had breed a low alkaloids variety of the perennial lupines, i think it was somewhere around 2010, he later said in the comments, that a university in germany had the most advanced breeding program in that regard
1
