A very easily grown plant, it prefers dry sandy soils but succeeds in most conditions including poor, heavy or acid soils and even sub-soils. Prefers a cool moist climate, also succeeds in dry and arid regions. Tartarian buckwheat is hardier and more resistant to cold than the more commonly grown buckwheat, F. esculentum, though it does not yield so highly. Occasionally cultivated for its edible seed in Europe and the Himalayas, there is at least one named variety. 'Madawaska' is more cold hardy and drought tolerant than the type.

Leaves - raw or cooked. Acceptable raw when added in small quantities to mixed chopped salads, otherwise the leaves are much better cooked. They are rich in rutin. Seed - cooked as a cereal.The seed can also be sprouted and used in salads, or ground into a powder and used as a cereal. An edible oil is obtained from the seed.

Seed - sow from the middle of spring to early summer in situ. The seed usually germinates in 5 days. The earlier sowings are for a seed or leaf crop whilst the later sowings are used mainly for leaf crops or green manure.

Found at heights up to 4400 metres in the Himalayas from Pakistan to Bhutan.