Easier to Order Than Grow
September 19, 2011 – 10:10 amI bet you ordered edamame beans last time you went to a Japanese restaurant. I know I did.
So I grew some this summer. The brand was Container Gardens, Mr. Fothergill’s Edamame Beans, packaged in England and purchased at a local nursery. They were marked as needing a 90-day growing season, so seeds were in the ground by May 17. I subsequently had miserable luck with all of the beans I planted. So I ended up replanting the edamame.
Once the seeds finally sprouted (less that 50 per cent germination on the replant) and the plants started to grow, progress was very slow. This is a hairy little plant and the bright green pods are fuzzy too. The plants grew to about 40.5 cm (16 inches) high and I ended up adding bamboo stakes to the container to give the plants a bit of support. The beans wouldn’t necessarily need to be staked if planted in a container with other ornamentals that could provide some support.
The edamame bean plants finally started to hit their stride about a month and a half ago, as I was headed out on vacation. Isn’t that always the way. But the pods filled nicely, although there were not very many on each plant.
The harvest? – pretty small. These plants didn’t like the drop in evening temperatures that happened here in early September. And as a result the leaves and beans that were still to be picked turned yellow pretty quickly. So if you grow these watch carefully around harvest time – I found the window for harvest to be pretty narrow. That means one day they are ready and just a few days later the beans and pods have hardened and are too tough.
Grow again? Yes, I think I’ll try again next year – but in a container that gets a little bit more heat and is more protected from the wind. And I’ll probably seed a week or two later, just to ensure the weather is a bit warmer and settled. In the meantime, I’ll keep ordering them at the restaurant and buying them frozen – and be a lot more appreciative of what it takes to grow these fuzzy treats.
