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A garden enthusiast who loves to travel and capture the beauty of places and freeze the memories of her travels in photographs, as well as document her experiences in verse...thankful for the simple pleasures in life.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Winged Bean in my Backyard




The Four-Angled Bean/Winged Bean

(Psophocarpus Tetragonolobus)










The plant is a creeper and will fruit abundantly within six months of propagation.


























These are ready for the picking.
This bean ma

y look strange to many people, but it is a favourite in the 
tropics, both as a plant in the garden and as a vegetable for 
the plate.

As a garden plant, it can be easily propagated by seed. The 
first bean should be left on the plant to age and dry up. The 
old bean is then plucked and the seeds removed. One bean might 
yield up to 20 seeds. The seeds are planted in a hole about one 
inch deep.

The plant does not require much care apart from regular watering.
The blue flowers are petite and attractive. Once the flowers begin 
to appear, the gardener can expect to pick five or six beans daily. 
The beans grow approximately 2-3 inches daily.

To prepare a dish out of the beans, most people stir-fry them with 
garlic and onions and soya sauce for seasoning. To spice it up, we 
could add some pounded red chillies into the wok. I personally 
prefer to eat these beans raw, as one would eat cucumber. It goes 
well with a dip, or as part of a vegetable salad.

I always have a plant or two growing in my vegetable garden, and 
at the peak of the productive period, I can gather them by the 
baskets to be distributed to neighbours.

Note: It is said to have an amazing property of ridding gallstones. 
My sister-in-law heard about this and decided to see how true it was 
as she had been diagnosed to have some gallstones. After consuming 
these beans daily for a few months, a subsequent scan revealed that 
the gallstones were no longer there. Well, we don’t really know what 
scared the gallstones away, but the proteins in the beans would not 
have caused any harm, so it was worth the try for her.
e.
  1. Have a nice week
    Gunilla
  2. Wonderful review of a very interesting and unusual (to the US) plant. Thanks, Carolyn
  3. I love these! I think I found the seeds in Kitazawa Seed Co’s catalog and had to give it a try — no one around me had ever heard of them. I’m glad to have a recipe suggestion for them, too.
    I got your blog carnival submission and will definitely include this in the next issue! This carnival doesn’t require that you post your plant on the exact day the carnival is published: instead I collect the links people submit to me before the deadline and then put them together in an issue on the publishing day (which will be January 3rd for the next one).
  4. Hi i cannot see your location, but your profile made me think we are from the same patch on earth, haha! I eat this winged bean, though i just buy it from the market. We put them in stew we call “sinigang”. It is very rich in protein too. By the way, i can see your blogsite is prominently displayed in blotanical, and you’re already a patron blotanist coz you are very diligent. congratulations.
  5. Hi Andrea,
    We’re not exactly neighbours, but close. I garden in Malaysia, so my plants are familiar to you, I’m sure. Oh, yes, I am very much into blotanical…its fun!
    Rosie
  6. This is my favourite vege. I love it when stir-fried with sambal belacan!

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