When & How To Harvest Edamame (Soybeans) – 2 Ways!

by Panzer
Edamame is a protein-rich, easy-to-care for bean
that's pretty expensive and sometimes hard to find at the store.
If you took the leap this year to plant some of your own, stick around.
I'm going to show you when to harvest, when not to harvest,
two different methods to do it, plus some storage tips.
Hi, guys. I'm April from ReSprout.
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Very popular in Japan,
China and Korea, edamame is an ancient food
cultivated as far back as 7000 years ago in China.
It's actually the immature
version of a soybean, giving it the alternate name of green soybean.
And in some parts of the world, it's
referred to as vegetable soybean or sweet bean.
Soybeans can be a spring, summer or fall crop,
so when you harvest them is going to be based on
when you planted them and the variety that you picked.
Edamame seed varieties mature anywhere from 75 to 95 days
and sometimes longer if it's less than an ideal climate.
This year I planted Midori Giant from High Mowing Seeds.
I'll link those below.
They have a maturity date of 80 to 95 days.
The easiest way to know when your edamame might be ready is to simply check
your seed package or product page and mark the date on your calendar.
If you’re a total nerd like me, I have a spreadsheet
that does all this work for me.
I put in the dates of maturity for the variety that I picked,
when I planted it, and it pops out the date that I need to start looking.
If you'd like to get a copy of this crazy spreadsheet,
you can visit my website at resprout.com, and you can download a version
that you can customize for your own garden.
Soybeans grow tiny flowers that the pods set from.
You'll see these tiny bean pods next, but this is not what you want.
They get bigger filling out the pods with 1 to 4
beans, with the beans getting plumper and plumper.
Commercially, edamame is considered more marketable with three beans,
so when I first started growing these, I thought that was how all the pods
had to be.