Orach

**Sowing:** Orach is direct sown roughly two to three weeks before the last frost, seed set a quarter to half an inch deep and two inches apart in rows twelve to eighteen inches apart, germinating in seven to fourteen days at soil temperatures between 50 and 65°F; it can also be started indoors and transplanted four to six weeks before the last frost.

**Siting:** It grows best in full sun to part shade in average, well-drained soil that is fertile and high in organic matter, with a preferred pH of 6.5 to 7.5; it tolerates alkaline and salty ground and shrugs off drought, though regular watering improves the flavour of the leaves.

**Care:** Seedlings are thinned to spacings of roughly six to eighteen inches, with the thinnings eaten, and flower buds are pinched off to keep plants branching and producing young leaves; gardeners make succession sowings until the weather warms and can sow again in midsummer for a fall crop.

Aphids are the main pest reported on orach and can be dislodged with a hard stream of water, ideally early in the day, with plants checked for natural predators such as ladybeetle and lacewing larvae before treating further. Diseases are seldom a problem for orach in home gardens.

Leaves and stems are picked once plants reach four to six inches tall, cutting an inch or two above the soil in cut-and-come-again style, or by thinning closely spaced plants and eating the thinnings; young leaves continue to be harvested from maturing plants while older leaves are left to sustain them, with harvest typically running forty to sixty days from sowing. Whole stems can also be cut fresh, or left until the seed pods have matured and then hung to dry.

**Culinary:** Orach leaves are eaten raw or cooked as a spinach substitute with a mild, slightly salty flavour, and are traditionally paired with sorrel to soften its acidity; the seeds are edible too, ground into a meal and mixed with flour for bread.

**Ornamental:** Red-leaved forms are grown as edible landscaping plants for their colour as much as their eating quality.

**Historical:** Ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated orach as both a food and a medicinal plant, and its seeds have also been used historically to make a blue dye.

Orach traces to Western Asia and the Mediterranean, and is considered one of the more anciently cultivated leaf vegetables, described as early as 400 BC. It spread into Europe under Greek and Roman cultivation and remained a staple potherb until spinach displaced it as the favoured leaf crop, though orach has since naturalized widely across North America, Australia, and New Zealand.