Jimbo Mathews

My 'Golden Giant' Amaranth plants are over 7 feet tall, with 15" tall and 8" wide grain heads. Some are darker redish brown, some are a more faded golden brown. I can pull off a bit of the 'grain' head and roll it around to reveal little tiny white seeds that I assume aren't fully mature yet. How do I tell when to harvest? Do I whack off the heads and hang them up to dry when its time?

Finding this makes me feel much much better about my dismal tomato crop, as they were planted pretty close to a bit black walnut tree. What is a REAL mystery to me however is my crop of golden giant grain amaranth. The ones that are by far the tallest and best (7 ft now) are the ones most directly in line with the root radius of another black walnut tree. Maybe its coincidence, maybe weeds were suppressed and the lawn I busted up to plant these was somehow conserving nutrients better than the grass outside the radius of said walnut tree. It'll be really interesting if I can replicate this, or if similar results happen with my wicked late crop of corn in the same area. Any ideas on some possible symbiosis here?

So a couple of months ago I planted a big patch of Golden Giant Amaranth and several plants are over 6 feet tall though some are only 3 or 4 feet. I also ordered some fast growing Aztec black corn from seedsavers as a gamble that it doesn't freeze before the yearly average of Nov 15th here. I'm very new at all this, but I've been told that corn is a 'heavy feeder' and likes a lot of nitrogen. I picked up a little bag of blood meal today. Would it be a good idea to put some on my corn when I plant it or maybe while its growing? How much should I put? How about adding it to those few stunted amaranths or my rather sickly malnourished looking tomatoes. If anybody can fill me in on blood meal that'd be awesome.

I'm reading all about Black Locust and am very excited about the prospects of this amazing tree. Nitrogen fixation, naturally preserved, hot burning wood all sound fantastic. I'm thinking of eventually working it into a food forest for nitrogen fixation on some georgia soil that was depleted from the bygone intensive cotton farming days. I'd also love to make fence posts out of it. I guess my questions are, based on any anecdotal experience folks have with it, the following:

1) Does it take over and become invasive like sweetgum or privet? If so does it just attack disturbed soil or does it creep into old growth forests as well?

2) Has anybody been able to grow lumber straight enough to make fence posts from it? About how long did it take?

3) If I raise a few cows in the same field that its growing in, will it kill em if they decide to munch of the leaves or beans?

Best,
Jimbo

Abe Connally wrote:

Jimbo Mathews wrote:10 pounds of grain makes 9 pounds of crickets which we can eat all of.

Can you give a source for this? 2 problems I see which this statement - 1. FCR for crickets is 3:1 (at best, from the sources I can find), and 2. although you can "eat" all the cricket, only about 60% of it's body mass is actually digestible.

My source was a documentary on youtube, which upon reflection, isn't much of a source at all. Your comments about FCR and aquaculture have me doing some interesting reading and thinking about a lot of things. Maybe inserting them somewhere in the middle of the food chain will be the best way to slowly integrate bugs into the western diet.

In the mean time, i'll be starting my utopian cricket farm raising project soon to see whats up Maybe I'll play around with measuring and weighing water, different, foods, and the crickets themselves.

Abe Connally wrote:I've eaten grasshopper: http://www.velacreations.com/food/animals/insects.html

Many insects are edible, though there is not a lot of info out there about raising them commercially. Take the crickets, for instance. On the net you will find people feeding them cat food, dog food, chicken/layer mash, etc. That's really not very sustainable compared to just feeding your chickens layer mash.

I'm sure feeding crickets vegetable scraps is more sustainable, but I'm thinking feeding crickets layer mash is more sustainable than feeding chickens layer mash. I heard a figure that 10 pounds of grain makes one pound of beef (and we only eat 55% of the cow after that), whereas 10 pounds of grain makes 9 pounds of crickets which we can eat all of. While i'm sure chickens are far more efficient at converting grain to protein than cattle, I'd bet bugs are more efficient than chickens. As taboos and conceptions about food change (Bacon was eating relatively low on the hog back in the day, now its promoted as the best of the best), I'm sure we'll all be eating insects in some processed form in the next 50 years. Their carbon/methane production is nil compared to farming mammals. I'm going to start experimenting with crickets soon in terms of raising and eating. I do wish there were some good books on the subject, since almost all other cultures already eat insects and there are like 1400 known edible ones (I'm sure hundreds of thousands of others are edible, but who knows which ones eh?). Maybe we need a new field, ethno-entymology

Deff agree that bugs as animal feed is awesome/sustainable idea, but I think bugs as human feed is the most sustainable of all if animals are part of our diet.

Since this is the non-vegetable protein source of the future, I'm thinking about getting a head start. I'm thinking of starting out with crickets, since they're good bait for fishing too. Any tips on raising or eating them? I think processing them into flower and baking into some bread would be awesome

How about black walnut shavings? Just dumped out grandpa's old shop vac and it was FULL of black walnut and pine sawdust and chips. Tons more very finely ground in his shop all free for the taking. Right now my new compost pile is way heavy on the greens, pulsing with more maggots than I've seen in my life and smelling pretty ripe. Not sure I have enough mass to get enough heat to cook seeds so short of throwing in weeds these old wood shavings are my main potential source of browns to balance things out.

Jordan Lowery wrote:I grow grain amaranth every year. It's my favorite early succession plant when starting s food forest. It stimulates life in so many ways.

If the soil is good dry cropping is possible. But on poor soil some irrigation helps with yield a lot. The difference in 1/16th a pound or less per head or 1 lb per head.

Make sure you use the stalks as mulch. Cut them at soil level and scatter naturally on top of each other, or on contour lines. This preps the soil well for the next succesion. If you leave the stalks up but stripped of flower heads and let the leaves fall off it helps break up frost to understory plants.

I won't even get into how many insects it will bring when blooming. You'll see.

This sounds very encouraging! How often would you water in a drought, like a once a week deep soak?

Anybody got experience with growing amaranth? I know a native species called 'pigweed' grows here according to a fellow up the road who turned me on to some giant amaranth he gave me seeds to. Its the 'golden giant' variety that I'm growing here, I've got around 40 plants in the ground now. I'm hoping to have a nice harvest in the fall. He told me the best thing to do was just step back and let em go, no need to water or anything else. Any other theories? Anything ya'll can tell me about this plant would be awesome.