Pak choi

[seedcorn]

What do you think of it?
How do you eat it?
What variety do you like?
Anything I should be aware of?

 

[majorcatfish]

What do you think of it?......... love it one of our favorite spring and fall veggies to grow.

How do you eat it?...hum they can go into so many dishes beef,chicken,pork, seafood, soups ..the best way imho is to place into a recipe at the last couple minutes so it keeps crisp. the greens are great in a salad as well.

What variety do you like?.. over the last couple of years growing it, we decided to stick with "black summer" variety "johnny's seeds" nice heads does not have a overly mustard taste to it.. able to start indoors and transplant or direct seed and transplant to their finally home, while young .

Anything I should be aware of? ...flea beetles/cabbage fleas, easy to control..... otherwise no other pests.
as for planting plant would recommend only planting 6 at a time per every other week....

bok choi will stay in the veggie crisper part of the fridge for 2 weeks....

you need to give a try at least once to be the judge....

 

[journey11]

Everything Major said...

I like to pick 'em rather small and saute briefly for stir-fries.

 

[majorcatfish]

when i say give a try ,you need to grow it don't buy from the store , that's the nastiest stuff mainly at 2.39 head.....

if i can grow it under plastic so can you.....

 

[majorcatfish]

dw wanted a head to go along with the sauted onions on the denver steaks tonight..
you can see the holes that the flea beetles did early on..

of course picked the one that has started to go to seed..

and yes the greenleaf lettuce is doing quite well..

oh heck might even add some to tomorrow's breakfast scramble.....

 

[digitS']

I have grown and liked the Black Summer, altho Mei Qing Choi has been in my garden almost from its earliest arrival in the catalogs. My first experience with bok choy was from a soopermarket. It's a wonder I came back to the veggie for another try ...

Those two varieties are what some call Shanghai types. They are dwarf, green-stem varieties. (BTW, bok choy = pak choi. It just has to do with our inability to pronounce the name properly in English. Remember when Beijing was Peking ?)

Green-stem, dwarf ... altho some folks are perfectly happy with the white-stem. Don't go too small. But, that is my opinion again. Toy choi is so tiny !

Sometimes you have to harvest these things early because of summer heat. Toy choi will be the size of your pinkie.

I'm not as imaginative as Major'. Stir-fry or in a bowl of noodles is how 99% of the bok choi arrives at my table.

Steve

 

[digitS']

Yes, flea beetles ...

They like bok choy almost as much as they do radish.

You can lose the entire crop to the beetles some years if you don't spray. Spinosad works.

Steve

 

[majorcatfish]

flea beetles were wicked last summer in all the gardens...
the nice thing about bok chio is you can harvest it at and stage of growth. the black summer variety grows nice big heads in the spring time and smaller one in the late fall...