Quinoa

Qualitymark

Anyone growing quinoa? Someone gave me some seed and told me it grows lovely in Ireland.

An Ri rua

Will be very interested to follow this thread. I'm a vegan and I eat a good bit of the stuff.

Farmer Pudsey

Looking at the figures it could be a very profitable crop to grow. I know that it has to be harvested by hand but we would get over that. With yield of 3-5 ton/HA and crop value of 2300 euro/ton if it can be grown we will have to find a way to harvest it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa

Qualitymark

The grain also needs to be washed, as when harvested it has a bitter saponin coating. Though friends who grow it say they don't actually wash much of this off, they like the taste, strangely.

How Canadian growers do this: http://www.islandgrains.com/how-to-remove-saponin-coating-from-quinoa-seeds/

Effects

Article in the Guardian about it here. It seems quite anti vegetarian/vegan and ill informed. She mentions about a trial crop in the UK that had failed. She also doesn't realise that over 90% of soya production is for animal feed.
Have your friends grown much of it? If I knew it would work I might plant some myself.

Qualitymark

Effects wrote: »

Article in the Guardian about it here. It seems quite anti vegetarian/vegan and ill informed. She mentions about a trial crop in the UK that had failed. She also doesn't realise that over 90% of soya production is for animal feed.
Have your friends grown much of it? If I knew it would work I might plant some myself.

They grow it for their family - these are almost completely self-sufficient organic farmers. I'll ask how much they grow.

Qualitymark

OK, here's the word:

As to quinoa, we don't grow anything in huge quantities since we have often 60-70 different things going. Quinoa the last years we grew on maybe 50 square meters or a bit less. Even last year which was completely awful we got enough of a crop for 5 people to eat 10 meals or so. (in good years up to 5 times better than that) The same area of wheat did not produce enough to bake a small loaf.
The main thing with quinoa is that it ripens unevenly which is not a problem if you harvest over say 2-3 weeks by hand everything that is ripe enough. Easy to see when the seeds heads turn from green to white-yellow-red. It comes in different colours. Leave it too long and the birds will have had a feast. Cut too soon and more than half of the plant will not have turned colour yet and the seed in the green parts will be useless. By hand you walk between the rows and harvest any part of the plants that is coloured and you leave the rest to mature at its own speed.