Orach I love you

[ottawagardener]

Seriously, this is one of my truely favourite edibles. It is a self seeding annual but if you weren't paying attention, you'd think it is a perennial, that's how reliable it's seeding is. The leaves are a 'spinach substitute' and can be eaten raw or cooked. It is milder than spinach in my opinion and makes a good all around green. The leaves are even edible after it has gone to flower but possibly better cooked. Best yet, it is attractive. Here's my favourite colour:

Magenta Mountain


A mix, seeded alongside salad burnet, english daisy and so on...

[hiven]

I am growing orach the first time this year and liked them, it is now in my growing and saving seeds list . Mine are bolting now, got to resow more . Aren't they tasty and lovely looking that we are hooked

[canadamike]

OK kiddo, you are teasing me a lot here, I know NOTHING about it and fel stupid, like often feel with Orflo.

Speaking of feeling stupid, I have one tenth of one quarter a back left, I am walking like a 300 years old fart ( but I am happy) , 3 gardens of more than one acre ( 5 -6 acres in total) on 3 different farms, one being about one kilometer totally lost in an alfalfa field for isolation purposes.

If I remember well, there was a wonderful young woman who was supposedly going to come and visit.

I am still waiting...

[stevil]

Jun 15, 2009 14:26:33 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

Seriously, this is one of my truly favourite edibles. It is a self seeding annual but if you weren't paying attention, you'd think it is a perennial, that's how reliable it's seeding is.

Good call! I have a red one (from seed received at different times as "Rubra" and "Red Plume" - they look and behave the same). I started with only one plant which resulted in zero seeds - it needs a partner it seems. Once that little detail was sorted it became a permanent feature. I call annual and biennial plants such as this "Permanent Vegetables".

The biggest drawback is that they go to seed quite quickly. Then I discovered a variety Atriplex hortensis "Lille Næstved Skole" , a green variety offered by the Danish Seed Savers a few years back - it was supposedly more bolt-resistant and that turned out to be the case, so that one is worth trying to source.

Apart from the beds where these two varieties are permanent, I also sow seed of both varieties in very early spring (end of March) in a cold greenhouse together with other salad crops and they are ready to harvest in May (NB! I have the two varieties separate otherwise in different parts of the garden and they seem to keep to themselves).

This year I'm growing an old Norwegian variety sourced from SSE, known as BACKLUND/BLY (Norwegian Spinach). This is the story I received when i told those offering it that I intended to reintroduce it to Norway via the Norwegian Seed Savers: ” Your project is really exciting to us--thanks for the message. When we joined Seed Savers in 1990, we did not even know this story. Mark's Uncle Gib Backlund (Pipestone, MN) had been growing this "spinach" in his garden for decades; Uncle Gib got the seed from his father-in-law Grandpa Bly (Ruthton, MN) who said that he got it from his father whose father brought it with them from Norway. The family called it Norwegian spinach--but after a couple people from SSE grew it/saw it--they told us that it was orach. “

It will be interesting to see whether this one is also bolt-resistent here....

I'm also looking for the gold-leaved variety (have never got any germination on that one - the seed seem to lose their viability after a couple of years).

Yes, I love you Orach too....

[ottawagardener]

Stephen, I do have gold leaf (more light green) but it is part of a genetic mix of a few gold, a few rusty, and mostly green. I am selectively eating the greens to see if I can increase the other colours. If you want, I can send you some seeds of this mix and you can try and select out for mostly golds?

Good point about needing more than one plant. I always have more than one so I hadn't thought about it.

My red orach has crossed with my mix and I have one orach coming up that's gold with red gilded edges.

Michel: I have been CRAZY with gardening work though my back is still 95% good... guess I have good luck to thank for that. Not next week (camping) but the following, I'd love to check out your farm(s).

Telsing.

[stevil]

Thanks for the offer, but probably too late this season and I've found that Atriplex seed fairly quickly loses its viability. If you collect seed this season I'd certainly be interested for next season, unless anyone has pure stock...

I've get my oraches separated by about 10m (with a wall in between) and haven't seen evidence of any crosses.

[pattyp]

Those are great photos, Telsing.

They make me want to try growing some next year

[toad]

Orach-heirloom "Harres Mælde"

Orach is great. Just took this photo in a seedsavers garden I visited last saturday. Big juicy delicious leaves.

In Denmark we have started to suspect, that there are more than one species of orach. I'm doing a test, growing "rubra" and "Lille Næstved Gamle Skole" close together, to provoke crosspollination. Next year I will grow out seeds from the two kind of orach in two rows, to see if colors get mixid up, and if there is a dominance. Like Stephen and others report, these two seems not to interbreed, but we need to be sure.

[ottawagardener]

Interesting project, and that is one nice looking orach leaf.

[farmermike]

I was perusing the Wild Garden Seed catalogue, and noticed this fascinating info about orach.


Does this mean that orach seeds are edible in the same way as quinoa? Seems like it wouldn't easily produce enough of a seed crop to be worth eating.

Atriplex hortensis is definitely growing on me! I have volunteer seedlings coming up in the garden already -- just from the chaff leftover after winnowing. I wonder if those little black dormant seeds mean that an orach "seed bank" will remain in the soil for several years, even if it is not allowed to set seed each year. It wouldn't bother me much to have this plant going feral in my garden.