Amaranth, Red Garnet

What you'll need:

• 1 shallow tray with no holes
• 1 shallow tray with holes
• Amaranth seed (red garnet)
• Grow medium
• Something to mist the soil and seeds with
• 1 deep tray or blackout dome for blackout

Instructions:

1. Make sure your grow room is around 72-74 degrees (22-24 Celsius). We keep ours at 72 degrees (22-23 Celsius)
2. Put your tray with holes inside of a tray without holes
3. Fill your tray (with holes) with soil (we fill them about 3/4 full), and mist your soil to a normal planting amount
4. Spread 8g of seeds, evenly, across the entire tray (It's very important to not have clumps of seed, so take your time)
5. Mist the seeds again to get them wet (no need to pre-soak them!)
6. Place a shallow tray on top, place a 15lb weight inside of that tray, and place the entire tray set onto a shelf to germinate
7. NOTE: If you're planting more than one tray of amaranth, you can stack them. We've stacked them up to 6 high, without issues, with a 15lb weight on the very top of the entire stack.

Leave them stacked in germination for 3 days. You do not need to touch them at all during this entire time.

On day 3, remove the weight, unstack them, top water them, and put them into blackout for 1 day.

On day 4, remove the blackout dome, put them into the light, and start bottom watering them, once per day. Give them about 1/2 - 3/4 of the water you normally give your plants. Harvest on day 14-21.

You may find that you don't have to water them every day, so if the soil is wet, or there's still standing water in the bottom tray, you can probably skip that day. These will take some time to get right, so be patient, and log everything you do, to try to find the right water schedule for your environment.

Damping Off (very common with Amaranth)

The most common problem with amaranth is damping off, which is easily recognized by a circular formation (almost like a crop circle) where all of the plants are dying, and falling inwards or shriveled up. Damping off is a disease that will slowly kill your entire tray. If this occurs, remove the dampened off section (and at least 2-4 inches around it) with gloves, and refill that section with fresh soil.