Farmer Joe Smith from Niantic, Connecticut, discusses harvesting soybeans.

I first started raising soybeans after I tried them at a Japanese restaurant. They’re also very nutritious and a big hit for people looking to eat healthier. When you look these up in your catalogs they will be called edamame beans, not soybeans.

Quite a few of them come on a plant. The edamame here are mature, nice and fat in the pod. The lower ones tend to fatten up first, and those at the top take a little longer. But the whole plant is usually ready to pick in about a week. The trick with soybeans is to plant many times a season. They go from being ripe to overripe in about 10 days.