Get Growing in May

Get Growing

Welcome to our sixth Get Growing entry. This series will span 12 months, and is designed to help aspiring vegetable gardeners get out of the kitchen and into the garden. On the first of each month, we will discuss one garden project for the novice vegetable gardener. Because we are located in Houston, Texas, our growing conditions differ from many parts of the English-speaking world. To help guide gardeners in cooler climates, our Get Growing partner is Daphne of Daphne's Dandelions. Daphne gardens in Boston, and she will be providing monthly advice for Northern gardeners (although her excellent site is a wonderful resource for gardeners everywhere). For Get Growing in May, Daphne discusses starting summer vegetables and growing tomatoes.  Regardless of where you live, her advice is invaluable.

Zone 9 in May

In Zone 9, the temperatures start heating up in May.  Here in Houston, the average highs for May are over 90° and it won't start to cool off until October.  While most of our fall vegetables are on the way to the compost pile, our favorite summer vegetables are thriving right now.  This includes tomatoes, eggplant, basil and chile peppers.   Our snap bean plants are loaded with flowers and tiny beans, and the cucumbers and melons are filling in.  Seeds that can be started this month include succession crops of snap and pole beans, arugula and other year-round greens such as mizuna and senposai, and cucumbers.  Sweet potatoes, lima beans, winter squash, melons and corn can also be started in May.

Growing Edamame (Soybeans)

Another crop to consider for your Zone 9 garden is edamame or soybeans.  These plants love the heat, are low-maintenance, and extremely productive.  Edamame are in the legume family, which means the plants improve the soil, a significant benefit for an organic vegetable garden.  In fact, soybeans are so beneficial that many organic growers plant soybeans as a green manure to add nutrients and organic matter in the off-season. This makes soybeans an excellent choice to grow alongside heavy feeders such as corn and tomatoes that are part of the summer vegetable garden.

Growing soybeans could not be easier.  The seeds are large and forgiving, and should be planted an inch or so deep in full sun.  Plant about 6 inches apart in rows, and be prepared to stake the plants depending on the variety you select. 

Our favorite soybean is "Moon Cake" from Southern Exposure.  These plants grow over three feet tall, and eventually need support, especially when loaded with pods.   The beans are extremely tasty, and many of the pods include three big, fat soybeans making for an abundant harvest.

For more exotic soybeans, try "Black Jet" from Johnny's, a black soybean that matures early, is extremely productive, and loaded with flavor.  Another great choice is "Kouri" from Kitazawa, a brown-seeded soybean that is prized in Japan for its sweet, nutty flavor.  We're growing both of these edamame varieties for the first time this year, so check back for reports as our plants mature.

Why Grow Edamame

Edamame are not only good for the garden, but also one of the super foods that should be a part of any healthy diet.  Soybeans are a complete protein, containing all the essential amino acids.  They are rich in omega-3 fat, calcium, iron, folate, B-vitamins, and isoflavones (which are found only in soy).   They are also an extremely versatile vegetable in the kitchen; while they are prominently featured in many Asian recipes, edamame work in most recipes calling for peas, beans, chickpeas or limas.

Soybeans are readily available frozen, either shelled or in their pods, but it is not easy to find fresh soybeans at the market.  Freshly picked soybeans are reputed to be the healthiest option, and, like most organic vegetables fresh from the garden, the taste is far superior.  In Japan, fresh edamame are considered such a delicacy that they are eaten raw, straight from the pod.  Our fresh edamame were so delicious last summer that our 9-year old became passionate about growing, harvesting and eating soybeans.  Thanks to him, we couldn't grow enough to keep up with demand in our household.  Add in how easy they are to grow, their versatility in the kitchen, the significant health benefits of eating soybeans, the fact that these plants love our Zone 9 blistering heat, and the soil benefits of growing soybeans, and you'll see why we love edamame for the summer vegetable garden.

Other Posts in the Get Growing Series

Determining Your Gardening Zone and Growing Peas
Garden Planning, Planting Methods and Seed Selection
Growing Lettuce
Starting Seeds Indoors
Growing Tomatoes
Compost:  What is It, How to Make it, How to Use It
Growing Snap Beans
Spinach, Row Covers and Peas
Growing Eggplant
Growing Brassicas

Green Tea Buckwheat Soba Noodles with Edamame and Tofu

Some gardeners suggest that the best way to harvest edamame is to pull out the entire plant and then pluck off the beans. The rationale is that the edamame tend to ripen at the same time, so there's no point to leaving the plant in the garden.  It also eliminates the tedious bending and searching for mature edamame.  But it takes fortitude to yank up a perfectly healthy vegetable plant, especially one that is still growing and flowering, so we chose to leave the plants in the ground and harvest the mature edamame every few weeks.  Our approach produced edamame all summer, plus a massive late crop of edamame that we harvested this week.  The plants were loaded from top to bottom with the last beans of the season, so laden with pods that the plants were drooping under the weight of the soybeans.  With no new flowers in sight, and few immature pods that needed more time to mature, we finally pulled up the plants.  Just four plants yielded several pounds of gorgeous, fat edamame pods. 

Now the tough decision -- how to use them.   One of our favorite weeknight dinners is a Japanese dish using green tea buckwheat soba noodles.  This dish is heavy on the protein (using both edamame and tofu), and the green noodles look beautiful with our freshly picked edamame.  The noodles are also surprisingly hearty, making for a very filling meal.  We use fresh tofu, but packaged works just as well.  For that matter, if you don't have any fresh edamame, frozen are fine.  Make sure you select the beans that have already been removed from the pods.

Green Tea Buckwheat Soba Noodles 
(Uji Cha Soba) 
with Edamame and Tofu 
(makes 2 entree portions)

Ingredients

7          oz         (1 package) uji cha
                         green tea buckwheat soba noodles
2         Tbs        Japanese soy sauce
1         Tbs        Japanese rice vinegar
1         Tbs        mirin
1         Tbs        tahini
1         cup         fresh edamame, removed from pods
10       oz           fresh tofu or firm packaged tofu, cubed
                         peanut oil
3         Tbs        sesame seeds

Procedure

1. Heat oven to 350.  Place sesame seeds on sheet pan and toast in oven until fragrant and golden, about 3 minutes.  Remove from oven and set aside to cool.
2. Cook noodles in boiling water 3 to 4 minutes.  Drain immediately in a collander and run under cold water to stop the cooking process.
3. Heat peanut oil over medium high in a pan or wok.  Fry tofu until golden brown, flip over and repeat.  Remove from pan and place on paper towels to dry.
   
4. Boil a pot of salted water.  Add edamame and cook until tender.  Our fresh edamame cooked in 3 minutes.  If using frozen, it may take longer.  Drain immediately in collander.
5. Combine soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin and tahini.  Add to the noodles and mix well.  Fold in the tofu and edamame.  Spinkle with toasted sesame seeds.  Serve hot or cold.

Edamame Harvest

I picked a good-sized batch of "Taiwame" edamame, our first soybean harvest of the year. Most pods have two beans, although there are a few with only one. I could tell which pods were ready by feeling for big plump beans. While the pods at the tips of the plants were ripe, those further down were still immature. I left the skinny pods on the plants, and there will be another good harvest in a week or two. The "Mooncake" edamame plants are just starting to bloom, which means the Mooncake beans should be ready to pick soon after the Taiwame finish. I started both types of edamame at the same time, so this sequential harvest is just fortuitous.

David boiled the pods for a few minutes in salted water and they were ready to eat. Our older son was feeling unusually adventurous and he tasted a bean without any cajoling on my part. I don't know who was more shocked, but he instantly loved them. He popped the beans in his mouth like candy, leaving just a few for me. I don't think our edamame taste any better than restaurant or store-bought, but the fact that he helped grow these beans won him over. I'm thrilled that there is now a vegetable we can grow that he'll enjoy eating, so I'm going to plant even more edamame plants next year. That way there should be enough for all of us.

How many Edamame does it take to fill a bowl?

I love to eat edamame so much that I have a hard time sharing. The edamame at Grand Lux are particularly tasty, and it's easy to polish off a big bowl of them. Pine Forest Restaurant makes a really nice dish with soybeans (which are just shelled edamame), mustard greens and tofu skin that is one of my favorite dinners. So of course I had to try my hand at growing soybeans.

I ordered "Moon Cake" from Southern Exposure and "Taiwame" from Evergreen Seeds. It was tough not to order the "Beer Friend" seeds from Evergreen just based on the name, but for some reason which I cannot now remember, I chose Taiwame. I started the first Moon Cake seeds in mid-April, and none of them germinated. All my other bean seeds had close to 100% germination, so I was really surprised. It turns out that soybean seeds germinate in relatively dry soil, and don't like to be soaked. By the time I got back around to soybeans, it was already the end of May, and I decided to start Moon Cake and Taiwame at the same time. I let the soil stay quite dry after initially watering in the seeds. This time, I had much better results.

I prefer to start my seeds in pots. I have a stack of 4" black grower pots that I constantly recycle, and I just use regular potting soil. I keep the pots on the ground under a tall sego palm, where they get a bit of filtered sunlight throughout the day. As I have grown in confidence (and run out of available pots), I have started direct sowing most of my beans. Bean seeds are large and forgiving, and the results have been excellent. It's also a pleasure to skip the transplanting step and leave the plants where they are. The soybeans, however, were all started in pots, and then transplanted to the garden at the end of May.

The Taiwame plants are all together in the back yard. I have them staked because they were starting to send out runners, sprawling on the ground and tangling together. The plants are not huge, but they are already full of beans. The Moon Cake plants are in clusters where I could squeeze them in -- some in the front, some along the driveway, and some in back. The plants look healthy, but so far there are no beans. For the most part, they are well-behaved plants that do not require staking.

The big question is whether my garden can produce enough soybeans to make it worthwhile. It takes a lot of edamame to make just one serving, and despite growing quite a few plants, I'm not sure I'll be able to fill even one bowl with edamame from the garden. I've read that soybean plants produce all their beans at once and then they're done. With only four or five pods per plant right now, I'm not encouraged. We may have to continue gettiing our soybean fix at Pine Forest and Grand Lux.