Most of the garden’s edamame was ready to harvest. These green plants in the foreground will grow a while longer, but the yellow plants you see the gardeners working on, and the ones way in the background between them, were ripe and ready.
Instead of pulling out whole plants, gardeners snipped them off just above the ground to leave the healthy legume roots to imbue the soil with nutrients. Each row still contains five plants, which will be left there for the pods to dry out and supply our edamame seed for 2024.
The next task was removing edamame pods from each plant.
The pods were divided into shares for gardeners. Many 485 Elm garden crops are “harvest and eat as much as you’d like.” Edamame is one of the crops we harvest all at once and divide among the number of registered gardeners. Other share-divided crops are garlic, onions, potatoes, and winter squash.
This gardener lit up a camp stove and steamed batches of edamame.
Gardeners shared steamed edamame dipped in salt and some sake and beer. The taste of garden-fresh edamame is a joyous revelation!
