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No need to ramble on praising the many health benefits of soybeans, their high quality protein, their healthful oil, and so on. We'll assume you're not living in a cave.

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This vegetable often goes under its Japanese name, edamame. If you want one new vegetable to try in your garden this year, make edamame that vegetable.

Soybeans are bushy, frost-tender plants that you grow just like bush green beans. Make rows about two-thirds of a metre apart, or, if you garden in beds, plant a row down either side of a bed. In either case, drop seeds 7.5 centimetres apart into furrows 2.5 centimetres deep.

Green soybeans taste something like a cross between a fresh lima bean and shelling pea -- and it's as easy as those plants, or easier, to grow. Soybeans tolerate hot weather better than peas, which languish in summer heat, and cool weather better than limas, which languish in spring's coolness. And Mexican bean beetles, which in some years devastate green beans, have little interest in soybeans.

Once you're smitten by the delectable taste of edamame and want to stretch the harvest season, do so by planting varieties that take different times to mature.

Harvest edamame pods when they are fully plump and still bright green. As with limas and some other beans, edamame must be cooked before they're fit to eat.

Steam or boil them in their pods for about eight minutes before eating. Cooled pods gladly release their beans when gently squeezed between your fingers. If you harvest more than you can eat fresh, pack excess cooked pods into bags and into your freezer. When you're ready to eat them, put the beans in a pot with about three to five centimetres of water and boil for five minutes.