My front bed is turning Japanese. And French

After the winter crops the front veggie bed was looking pretty tired. All the brassicas came out, leaving a random medley of marigolds, parsley, onions and weeds. Normally an ugly veggie bed is just part of the yearly cycle – it can’t be attractive all of the time. But seeing as this bed basically forms my front fence and my street has a reasonable level of foot traffic, I try very hard to keep it presentable.

The onions had gone to seed without forming a bulb, and I was just sick of waiting for them frankly, so on Sunday afternoon I pulled everything out. I replenished the bed with cow manure and dug it over with a garden fork, then I planted out about 2 metres with edamame.

Edamame is a variety of soybean. It has fat, flavoursome pods that are eaten as a vegetable. As you can probably imagine by the name, I first encountered them in Japan, where they are hugely popular. They are typically boiled briefly, then salted and served hot/warm. In Australia you can find them in sushi places in the little plastic sushi boxes. They’ve been cooked and salted the same way, but are typically cold.

Unlike most beans, edamame are quite high in fat. I’m not talking avocado proportions, but if you eat a whole plate of them, then there’s about 14 grams of fat. Combined with the fibre and protein, this makes them a brilliant snack for kids, particularly ones you are trying to fatten up.

Actually, if fattening them up is your goal, then clearly it would be more effective to serve them a mars bar, but personally I like to keep my mars bars for myself 🙂

Edamame is a summer crop, and last year I was bit late with my planting. It started to cool off, and the pods really didn’t have the opportunity to fatten up properly.  This year the timing is perfect and the position is much better – full sun. I’m hoping to get enough of a harvest to freeze significant amounts.

So along the front bed now I have a metre of corn, a metre of capsicums, chilli and eggplant, my 2 metres of Edamame, then the rest of the bed.

Also, an update on my grapevine. I’ve constructed a (very) basic trellice  for it to grow along, but I think I left the pruning and training a bit late. The vine is a flame seedless grape, and I was worried, because I’d read that they fruit in December, and I’m running out of time. Was it possible that I wouldn’t get any fruit this year?

So I went out and examined it closely, and sure enough, there is one cluster of flowers. Right down the bottom, under the canopy. A single bunch of future grapes. I guess I should be happy that the vine only has to put energy into a single bunch, but I was kinda expecting more. Is is possible that the bunches will form progressively, or should they all form at once?