Amaranthus - need help

During my "pretend to be a city worker stint" when the city was pulling out the plants from the park, I grabbed some large Amarantus (Joseph Coat) - here's my question.

The seeds appear a bit fuzzy and green along the stalk. When do I pull them off and is there a chance that they will be good next year?

Should I try to keep the big stalks alive - they're almost an inch across and the leaves are drooping even though I tried to stick them in the dirt, just in case.

Thanks - Sandra

I just hang mine upside down in the garage with something under the plant for the seeds to fall into. Don't have any this year or I could show you by picture. I think they will go ahead and ripen.

Wonderful, I will give that a try in my basement. Thanks so much!!! How big do they usually grow the first year?

They are an annual in our zone, and they will get full size each year. However, when mine seeded in the garden and came up the next year, they were not as tall. Need to be seeded in the spring to get good plants. This is what works best for me anyway.

There are many kinds of amaranthus. The kind I grew got to be nearly 6 ft. tall with tall plumes of dark maroon color. Millions of seeds. I tried the Joseph's Coat and didn't have good luck with it. However, I bought it as a greenhouse plant and that might have been my problem.

This message was edited Saturday, Oct 19th 3:07 PM

Yep, that's the one I have: Joseph's Coat - these were collected from the city park, and were between 3-5 feet tall, with stems an inch across. I'll give it a try, and if it works well, I'll have something to share next year!