Chenopodium quinoa

Quinoa or Chenopodium quinoa, also known as Goosefoot, Pigweed, or Inca wheat, is an erect annual plant of up to 3 m in height that is widely cultivated in Chile and Peru as a grain crop. It is drought resistant when fully established. The taproot is branched. The leaves are toothed, grey-green in colour, and vary in shape. The small flowers are arranged in clusters at the top of the plant. The seeds are cooked but have to be soaked and rinsed first to remove a coating of saponins on the surface. It is used for soups and stews. It can also be powdered for porridge, or sprouted and used in salads. The leaves are cooked or consumed raw as well. Young leaves are cooked like spinach. Further, the whole plant yields gold or green dye.

Chenopodium quinoa is a ANNUAL growing to 1.5 m by 0.3 m at a fast rate.
It is hardy to zone 10 and is not frost tender. It is in flower from July to August, and the seeds ripen from August to September. The species is hermaphrodite and is pollinated by Wind. The plant is self-fertile.
Suitable for: light , medium and heavy soils, prefers well-drained soil and can grow in nutritionally poor soil. Suitable pH: acid, neutral and basic soils and can grow in very acid, very alkaline and saline soils.
It cannot grow in the shade. It prefers moist soil and can tolerate drought. The plant can tolerates strong winds but not maritime exposure.

a cultivated food crop. A plant of higher elevations in the tropics, it has also been successfully grown in the temperate and subtropical zones. Plants tolerate light frosts at any stage in their development except when flowering. An easily grown plant, it requires a rich moist well-drained soil and a warm position if it is to do really well, but it also succeeds in less than optimum conditions. Tolerates a pH range from 6 to 8.5 and moderate soil salinity. Plants are quite wind resistant. Plants are drought tolerant once they are established. The plant is day-length sensitive and many varieties fail to flower properly away from equatorial regions, however those varieties coming from the south of its range in Chile are more likely to do well in Britain. Different cultivars take from 90 - 220 days from seed sowing to harvest. Yields as high as 5 tonnes per hectare have been recorded in the Andes, which compares favourably with wheat in that area. Young plants look remarkably like the common garden weed fat hen . Be careful not to weed the seedlings out in error. The seed is not attacked by birds because it has a coating of bitter tasting saponins. These saponins are very easily removed by soaking the seed overnight and then thoroughly rinsing it until there is no sign of any soapiness in the water. The seed itself is very easy to harvest by hand on a small scale and is usually ripe in August. Cut down the plants when the first ripe seeds are falling easily from the flower head, lay out the stems on a sheet in a warm dry position for a few days and then simply beat the stems against a wall or some other surface, the seed will fall out easily if it is fully ripe and then merely requires winnowing to get rid of the chaff.