Growing chia

Here’s a plant that I’m growing for the first time but I think I will be growing chia continually, as it’s not only attractive and useful, but hardy.

Chia (Salvia hispanica) burst onto the stage not many years ago in Australia as a new wonder food, and it’s still expensive in the shops compared to other seeds like sesame or linseed. I wanted to give it a go as a potential chicken feed, in the line of trying a wide range and seeing what grows easily.

Growing chia

growing chia plants flowering
Chia also has attractive green foliage and good height.

I grew mine from chia seed from the health food section of our supermarket.

The patch shown in the photos here was broadcast sown in January (high Summer) on a garden bed that had previously grown mustard through to seed. It’s on a steeply sloping (though terraced) bank, very well drained with deep loamy soil. It just kept growing and growing, and I was wondering whether I had missed the season and it would refuse to flower. As it is growing close to the house it was lucky that the plants are so attractive; densely foliaged with big salvia leaves which have a nice fragrance. It looks like a scaled-up nettle stand, around 2 metres tall. It has made a good green backdrop in a garden that still lacks height. But now with the days shortening all those branch tips are becoming flower heads, and it is looking pretty with the blue salvia flowers.

Chia flowers
Chia flowers

I needed to try a few sowings to see what season suits chia best here, and first tried a sowing in late Winter, but the dry weather hit it, and although it survived, it was stunted, flowered at about 10 cm high, and was overtaken by grass. Just as a test I have sown another bed in Autumn (April) which is doing well already, but I now doubt it will do well through Winter. The proof will be in the yield, and I’ll update when I collect the seeds from this crop, but I anticipate that chia will be best as a follow-on crop from Winter mustard, sown when it dries in December.

It apparently grows wild in Northern Mexico and California, so I was wondering how growing chia would go with our warm wet Summers. Those conditions seemed perfect for it in fact. It also has a reputation for doing well on acid and unfertilised soils, so again that’s good for here where I would like to broadcast beds out in the paddock.

There are some surprising things you read about chia that seem likely to be true, and some that are likely to be rubbish. I can believe that it was right up with maize in pre-conquest Mexico as a major crop, and that Australia has quickly become a major producer. Some of the nutrition claims though of whole armies marching for days on a couple of teaspoons, or it somehow being more hydrating than equivalent water, sound a bit extravagant.

It is quite nutritious though, and should be fine for chicken food. I’ll also keep a bag to experiment with in the kitchen. Some of those frog spawn drinks (it hydrates with a mucilaginous coating like basil seeds) sound interesting.