As of: March 29, 2024, 5:32 a.m
By: Ines Alms
Comments
Press
Split
The annual sweet lupins are a feast for the eyes in the flower bed. But they also have a lot to offer in terms of cuisine. It is important that you choose the right seeds.
It is no longer a secret that legumes are very healthy and are increasingly taking up more space on German plates. While the salty pickled lupine seeds have long been a snack on every traditional tapas table in Mediterranean countries such as Portugal and Spain, interest in sweet lupine is also steadily increasing in this country. It's not just vegetarians who appreciate this valuable source of protein as an alternative to meat or soybeans. Reason enough to grow the plant in your home garden - as long as you choose a non-toxic variety. In addition, sweet lupins are very easy to care for, bee pastures and are an eye-catcher in the bed with their numerous large flower candles.
Sweet lupins can be prepared like beans
The most uncomplicated of the sweet lupins: the blue or narrow-leaved lupine (Lupinus angustifolius). © Pond5 Images/Imago
Sweet lupins have even more to offer in culinary terms than just an aperitif snack: in cooked form, the seeds can be prepared like beans or chickpeas, for example as patties, in curries or in salads. Lupine flour can also be found commercially, with which you can bake gluten-free bread or cakes. These legumes definitely deserve a place on the menu because they are chock full of nutrients. As the
Bremen consumer advice center
explains, they contain up to 40 percent protein - almost as much as soybeans. There are many valuable amino acids in it. Sweet lupine seeds are low in carbohydrates and fat and are still an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids. They also provide the body with important fiber and minerals such as iron, potassium and magnesium.
You can find even more exciting garden topics in our free newsletter, which you can subscribe to right here.
Three varieties of sweet lupine are suitable for growing as edible plants
If you grow lupins in your own garden, you must pay attention to the right variety because not all of them are edible. Wild-growing species and many varieties of lupine offered as garden plants contain toxins in their seeds and other parts of the plant, explains the portal
Selbstversorger.de
. If you choose the cultivated forms of the lupine varieties, the sweet lupins, which are grown in the fields in this country, you are usually in the right place from a culinary point of view. However, allergy sufferers should be particularly careful here, as both a lupine allergy and a cross allergy to peanuts can trigger symptoms such as a tingling sensation in the mouth, shortness of breath or coughing.
The following sweet lupine varieties, named for their flower colors, are edible and suitable for growing in the garden:
Blue or narrow-leaved lupine (Lupinus angustifolius): Sow mid-March to mid-April
White lupine (Lupinus albus): sow in early April
Yellow lupine (Lupinus luteus): sow in early April
also read
Why you should look out for beer snails in your garden and cellar
Grubs in the compost – you can easily distinguish between pests and beneficial insects using the bucket test
Do not grow edible sweet lupins from your own seeds
Planting young plants is also possible in spring, or optionally in autumn. Whether sowing or planting – sweet lupins prefer a sunny location. Ideally, the soil is permeable, low in lime and not too nutrient-rich, preferably sandy. Once you've discovered the right variety for you, there's not much left to do, because the plants are undemanding and can handle frost and heat well.
Incidentally, sweet lupins are also the ideal plants for green manure because they loosen the soil, enrich it with nitrogen and thus improve the soil quality. They don't need fertilizer themselves, but a dose of primary rock powder is helpful. The lupine seeds can then be harvested from the pods from August onwards. Although sweet lupins can be easily propagated from seeds, they should only be grown for consumption in the next season using seeds declared as “sweet lupins”, because, similar to zucchini or pumpkin, many toxins can otherwise form again in the next generation .