Unharvested? Well, harvested, but under- or unused. I was looking for something to replace the tender salad greens in mid-summer, so I thought amaranth leaves and malabar spinach would do the trick. Ick. But so pretty, right?
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Wendell Berry:
"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it."
--from an essay in "The Long-Legged House""The word agriculture, after all, does not mean "agriscience," much less "agribusiness." It means "cultivation of land." And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both "to revolve" and "to dwell." To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle. It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term "agribusiness."
"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating."
--both the above are from essays in "The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays"Is this so hard to believe?
"An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor, or Ba'al, or The Golden Calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further," Richard Dawkins, 2002.
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fast grow the weeds 
Amaranth is pretty, but I’ve never eaten it. Looks like it would be bitter. Was it?
No, not bitter. Furry! Supposedly you can eat the little leaves. The seeds, though, can be popped like popcorn, and they’re a grain…
We are growing a variety known for it’s grain this year—but I heard some varieties are better than others for leaf eating. Was your variety recommended for eating? I have never had home grown amaranth—just the grain flour added to food in the market and I couldn’t tell it was there just like they say you can’t. Did you like the grain?
We used to grow borage—to add to vinegar. Supposedly you can eat that too—but it was the same as your problem—hairy leaves. Yuk.
Yeah, Monica, this was recommended for eating…multipurpose, actually; I suppose in a pinch the leaves would’ve been fine to eat, or steam… We did try the popcorn trick with the seeds. They did work, but we’d have needed about 3 cups to make a decent amount of “popcorn.” We could’ve harvested and ground the seeds up, but I didn’t quite get around to it before it began to rain a lot. OH well. Good intentions!
The smaller leaves on mine did taste okay… but I had Swiss Chard, spinach and lettuce that tasted much better. So I only tried the amaranth once. 🙂