Chinese fast food
Try growing Pak choi and Chinese greens, says Bob
LOVE stir fries and want to eat more greens? Then pak choi and Chinese greens are what you’re looking for. There’s a wide range of these quick, easy-to-prepare nutritious vegetables, some with more spinach-like leaves, others with more crunchy stems. And you’ve no doubt guessed they come from China.
Closely related to our brassicas, such as Brussels sprouts, the Chinese varieties are grown more rapidly so have textures suited for stir frying rather than boiling.
Now, with some cover – ideally glass or plastic to the ground – you can grow these almost year round. Outdoors is feasible but they’re less robust than our brassicas so weather beats them about a bit and their open habit gets muddied.
Under cover you also have more chance of beating off slugs and snails which flock to these succulent snacks, especially the Chinese cabbage. In fact, here’s a tip: if you want to keep the pests off your prized hostas encircle them with sacrificial rings of shredded Chinese cabbage!
You can sow in cells or small pots and transplant the seedlings when they’re small, though generally they all do best when sown where they’ll stay and are thinned later.
Either way prepare your soil well: it needs to be moist, rich and not hard packed (European brassicas have slower, more powerful root systems and so enjoy a much firmer soil).
As the Chinese varieties are, on the whole, smaller plants you can grow them closer together so they’re also
“They’re well suited to growing in containers”
well suited to growing in tubs and containers. Indeed a tub that could grow one decent cabbage could grow two if not three crops of a half-dozen pak choi over the same period.
Do remember to water and feed regularly for smooth, fast growth.
And one other thing. If you break off stalks rather than pull plants then the crowns go on producing more. Brilliant!