Lamb's Quarter

Chenopodium album

vegetable

Lamb's quarter (Chenopodium album), also called wild spinach or fat-hen, is a fast-growing annual and one of the most nutritious leafy greens in the world - a close cousin of both spinach and quinoa. Its soft, diamond-shaped, gray-green leaves, often dusted with a mealy white bloom on the undersides and growing tips, cook down like a richer, milder spinach, and the abundant tiny seeds can be cooked like its relative quinoa. Usually pulled as a weed, it is well worth growing or simply letting stand: it thrives in any decent soil through the heat of summer, when spinach has long since bolted.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Bean — A nitrogen-fixing neighbor that shares the warm-season, fertile bed
• Corn — Tall corn gives a little shelter while the greens fill the ground layer
• Squash — Sprawls below while the upright greens rise above in a mixed summer patch

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Leaf miners →

  As a spinach relative it gets the same leaf miners - remove mined leaves and use row cover on a tended crop

• Aphids →

  Hose off colonies from the tips; predators follow outdoors

• Flea beetles →

  Pepper the leaves with small holes - cover young plants and keep them growing fast

🌾 Harvest & storage

Pick the tender top few inches and young leaves through the summer, harvesting often to keep new growth coming; young leaves and shoots are the best part, as older lower leaves toughen. Cook the leaves like spinach for soups, sautes, and fillings. For seed, let plants mature and dry, then rub out and winnow the tiny seeds to cook like quinoa.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

Lamb's quarter is nutritionally outstanding - higher in protein, calcium, iron, and vitamins A and C than cultivated spinach - eaten as a cooked green much like spinach, mild and rich. The tiny seeds are a quinoa-like grain that can be cooked or ground. As with spinach it contains oxalates, so it is enjoyed cooked and as part of a varied diet. It thrives in summer heat when spinach cannot.