Lamb's Quarters
magenta spreen lamb's quarters
Chenopodium giganteum
Last edited by shiny on November 13, 2026. View history
Lamb's Quarters
Chenopodium album
An ancient green leaf vegetable that grows as a weed in many places and is a great summer green. Delicious cooked at any stage of growth. Self seeds easily and can grow into bushes 1.5 m tall. Sow in trays in spring when the ground warms up, prick out at 2.5 cm and transplant at 5 to 10 cm high at 30 cm diagonal spacing. It can also be scatter sown over prepared soil as a carbon crop, kept moist for germination.
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Lamb's quarters facts
Lifespan
Annual
living and reproducing in a single year or less
Row Spacing
30cm median of members' seed packets
Optimal temperature
12–18 °C
Absolute temperature
3–31 °C
FAO EcoCrop
Optimal rainfall
800–1200 mm/year
Absolute rainfall
300–3200 mm/year
FAO EcoCrop
Optimal soil pH
6–7
Absolute soil pH
4.2–8.2
FAO EcoCrop
Crop cycle
120–270 days
FAO EcoCrop
Optimal light
clear skies to very bright
FAO EcoCrop
What are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For lamb's quarters, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 3°C and a shortest growing cycle of 120 days at its best temperature, about 1440 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your lamb's quarters will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Varieties of lamb's quarters
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Lamb's quarters plantings
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Time to harvest
If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 120 to 270 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Chenopodium album L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Caryophyllidae Caryophyllales Chenopodiaceae |
|---|---|
| Life form | herb |
| Life span | annual |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | shallow (20-50 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | heavy, medium, light |
| Optimal soil fertility | high |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | long day (>14 hours) |
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