The Edamame is Ready to Harvest

The Edamame (Glycine max L.) is about ready to harvest. You may already know that Edamame is the proper name for a soy bean. We started growing them before you could easily buy them frozen in bags at the grocery store. None of our local stores sell them fresh.

The food guru Mark Bittman has an Edamame preparation video online at the New York Times.

We just grow 8 or 10 plants to have the pods as snacks. Preparation is simple: Boil in salted water and eat like a peanut, removing the bean from the pod.

The Blackberries are being hit hard by the heat and are dramatically slowing down production of ripe fruit. The flowering has stopped completely, although we have watered them to try to keep them going.

Amazingly, this Black Beauty lily reached 6-feet tall and is still blooming to the tune of a dozen flowers open every day. The weather has barely fazed it's rugged nature.

Anything happening where you are?

Rock Gardening, Edamame, Cleome

DOES IT ROCK? Here is another photo from the display gardens at Laporte Av Nursery in Colorado. I can't get over how many beautiful plants they were able to cram into nooks and crannies.
Our yard will have to have a new rock garden by next summer.



EDAMAME We harvested all the edamame this week - that's the advice of Johnny's Selected Seeds - harvest it all at once. You can cook it and freeze it or freeze it in the pod uncooked. I'll probably cook it first. Edamame is a wonderful snack food with lots of vegetable protein and good to have around.
The photo illustrates how they looked on the stem of the plant when it was time to harvest.

CLEOME This old fashioned flower is doing a great job of cheering up the yard everyplace it is growing. Once you get it established, it will come back year after year. These plants are the offspring of a pack of seeds I planted at least 5-years ago. When the plants look tired, I pull them and lay the dry stems (with seed heads in tact) where I want them to come up the following year. I can recognize the seedlings when they appear in the spring so I pull out the extras and transplant the ones I want. This year there are probably 10 or 12 around.


I'm still doing daily battle with the cucumber beetles and squash bugs. I flood the plants with water early in the morning and just wait for the bugs to show themselves so I can hand pick them off. There are no effective chemical controls so handpicking is the only way to manage them. The squash is worth it.

Enjoy these summer days - August is here and little signs of fall are appearing: The tree leaves are starting to drop, the zinnias are at their peak, the tomatoes are dying back and the daylight hours are growing shorter. Don't complain about the heat - it will be gone soon.

Flowers, Onions, Edamame, Greens and Berries

Flowers keep erupting from the little packs of seeds I planted in the front bed. They were all seeds from those free packs that come in the mail. Other than the bright orange California poppy, they remain without identification. I hope they re-seed. Maybe by next year I'll have found out what they are.
This was a big weekend in our yard - the piles of limbs from the ice storm are all burned now - it took 6 days of burning to dispose of them. All manner of wildlife had taken up housekeeping in those piles - box turtles, rabbits, snakes - all were displaced by the cleanup.

The red onions, pak choi and some mystery green were pulled yesterday and today. The greens were fabulous as part of our meals and the red onions are cleaned and spread out to dry.

The cool weather garden had to go in order to make room for edamame. The plants grew to 6 or 8 inches tall. I amended the soil with a variety of things and completed the transition from spring to summer. If the bunnies don't eat the heads off the edamame again this year we will be enjoying them as a great summer treat.

A friend was here today while I hung strips of flashing silver paper on onto the blackberry branches to distract the birds from the fruit. She said that the birds will use the silver surface as a mirror rather than a distraction from the sweetness of the blackberries. "Oh, doesn't my beak look grand today," the bird would say. "And, now for a snack." Oh, well, I have to at least try.

The 200 little plants I grew for the Muskogee Garden Club Garden Tour June 9 and 10 are benefiting from the sun finally coming out. They may be ready to plant in a week or two. Hopefully, your ventures and adventures in the garden are making you happy.

Dame's Rocket, Diagnosing Plant Damage, Barrel Cactus

Dame's Rocket, a type of mustard is the pretty purple flower in the photo. Many garden writers say to pull it out and burn it if you find it in your flower beds because it is so invasive.

So, I wonder, do you pull up pretty natives and put them in plastic bags in the trash so not one seed escapes?

It seems extreme to me but I may be eating those words next year if Dame invades aggressively.

Quite honestly, as difficult as it is to get anything to grow, what harm could a few purple beauties do?

These are edamame seedlings that have been decimated by something.

The empty spots in the seed starting tray had little plants in them until a bed was made for them in the garden.

After one row was planted, I put the flat nearby until more spring plants could be harvested.

When I went out to pull three large heads of greens, all the edamame had lost its head - something that chews and prefers tender green vegetables has moved in.

Barrel cactus is native to southwestern Oklahoma where this one came from. It's been blooming every spring for four years. When the original pot broke, transplanting it was prickly, but worth this year's show!

This is one of the edamame eaters.

There are at least four of them out there.

When the sun finally came out today I saw two adults romping.

No doubt happy that their offspring are so well fed.

Brent and Becky's Bulbs, Mid-May Gardening

If you have room for more bulbs, Brent and Becky's announced their 25% off sale today. The email said all remaining summer flowering bulbs are discounted until they are gone. It looks like every imaginable color combination of Caladium and canna lily is on the sale.



IN OUR GARDEN
In the vegetable bed, transplants of Edamame (edible soy bean pods) are going in where the lettuce and radishes came out. The slugs had to be "treated" before anything could be planted in one little strip where greens were being eaten by something that makes little round holes. The next seeds to go into that spot will either be vining melon or potimarron but the bugs must go first.

The coleus came back!


The shade beds are really taking off after the rain and a few mild days. Tiger lilies given to us a couple of years ago by David Gerard, a friend at the Phoenix, are showing off at over 3-feet tall. They are forming flower buds and will have those remarkable dark orange flowers with freckles.


Also the daylilies from Nelson Myers' garden are spiking tall buds. The 20 or so colors we have do not bloom all at once. They overlap in their timing so the bloom period seems to go on for a month.

The cucumber vines and the tomatoes bought as plants have flowers. The tomatoes I started from seed are further behind but look good. A few of the pesto basil volunteers came up in unexpected places and I stacked little rocks around them so I will not walk on them or pull them out by mistake.

It's too early, but every year about this time have to dig one out to find out that the garlic has not formed heads yet and neither have the red salad onions.



There is a lot going on this time of year in the garden. I hope yours is blooming and popping, too.