I grow bok choy in the fall here, because the slugs chew it up so bad in the spring. In fact it was about the only thing that got chewed by it last year.
We make our stir fries from what ever comes from the garden. But our favorite is summer squash of any kind.

I've grown several bok choys and they've all been pretty easy. I've found them easier than other brassicas, for whatever reason. I'd rank them somewhere in the lettuce range as far as ease of growing, especially if you plan to harvest them small. (I like to cook them whole when they have about 8 total leaves.) I really like one I got in a trade, listed as "Small Green Bok Choy."

They are occasionally bothered by slugs or caterpillars but after dealing with Squash Vine Borers, other pests seem relatively tame.

Some do better in hot weather than others. Some bolt when it gets too cold. AgroHaitai makes note of which is which. Evergreenseeds.com, too.

I have a couple different kinds if you'd like to try them, just let me know!

I think that the variety Joi Choi is very good It has a large white stalk. They grow very well in springtime and also in fall...just like broccoli for timing. I have had several volunteers to come up in the late summer.

Peggy
I grew small bok choi here a few years ago, it did well. Like all brassicas you have to watch out for the cabbage moth. I have a major problem here growing most brassicas because of the moths and also root maggots. Its frustrating, but the bok choi wasn't affected with root maggots at all.
Alberta

In stir-fry we like: Super Sugar Snap peas, Packman broccoli, Jersey Knight asparagus, etc. All relatively easy to grow. We had good luck with Pizza Peppers last year, too. Sort of a large sweet thick-walled jalapeno, if you haven't tried them. Tasty & prolific.

Ed

I agree with Wayne's post, the Joi Choy is a superior tasting variety.

My recent stir fry consisted of:

Fry chopped garlic and ginger in peanut oil. Remove after light browning.

Add cleaned shrimp to hot oil and stir until nicely pinked. Remove and add to garlic/ginger.

Add cut-up stir fry veggies into oil and toss until coated:

Joi choy, spinach, green onions, broccoli, thin sliced carrots, sliced green and/or red peppers (or what have you).

I also like to toss in some of my summer dried cherry tomatoes, etc.

Add back shrimp and garlic/ginger, cover and steam until veggies are tender but still a bit crunchy.

Serve over rice - with a dash of soy sauce - (and that's the way I like it!). Oh yes, season with lemon/pepper/salt.

Just my 2 c's.

Bejay

Check out Evergreen seeds for a great variety of quality seeds for asian vegetables. Tom

Here is a link that might be useful: Evergreen Seeds

Yard long beans are easy to grow veggies for stir fry. They are good cooked by themselves with a little oil and the usual Chinese seasonings. Yard long beans do well in hot weather.

I'm a fan of Evergreen Seeds also.

Jim

BTW, yard long beans get wrinkly when stir fried. Don't worry. They're supposed to be that way.

Jim

Thanks everyone, It's good to hear that it's easy to grow. I don't know why I've never grown it before. I'll look for the joi choy.

Bejay, I never thought of using dried tomatoes in a stir fry, I'll have to give it a try.

Hi Alberta, I have more than my share of cabbage moths and the word "hate" isn't strong enough to describe them. Without BT, I can't grow any brassica's.

Jim, I've been meaning to email you about beans. Busy, busy! I'm off to look at Evergreen Seeds site.

Thanks!

Bok choy is easy to grow in Oklahoma, but you have to watch it closely. One day it's growing nicely, the next day it has bolted! Harvest young, that's the solution.

Hi there. I'm new to this forum and was glad to see bok choy as one of the first threads I saw. I have been growing this now for about 8 years, it's really easy to grow - far easier than broccoli, sprouts or cabbage. The only difficulty is that slugs love them. Although they like cool weather, like brassicas, I plant them in springtime (my own seeds from the previous season) they grow slowly during summer (our summers are not very hot) but then take off in autumn. I eat them all winter long, but I don't harvest the entire plant, just individual leaves, for my stir fry. Around March or so they flower, then I collect my seeds for the following season. Highly recommended!!

Peggy, we prefer green stem bok choy. Mei Qing Choi has done the best for us.

We do have root maggots and cabbage worms that get in plants but the worse pests by far are flea beetles. Therefore, I sometimes need to spray.

Bok choy is easy and early but bolts fairly quickly. Usually, we harvest most of the plants whole and some when they are very small. However, the stem and flowers (either open or still in bud) are very sweet and tender.

The plants are quite cold hardy but won't usually make it thru our Winters. It is easy to start indoors and transplant and we just keep planting seed except during the middle of our hot, dry Summers.

Very much like BeJay's

2-4 Tbsp. canola or olive oil
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
5-6 scallions, julienned
4 cups bok choy, chopped into large pieces
chicken, beef, shrimp, (optional)
chicken stock or water
corn starch
2-4 tsp. soy sauce
lime juice or rice vinegar, to taste

Mix a tablespoon or 2 or corn starch in the stock and set aside.

In large skillet or wok, heat one-half oil over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and scallions and stir-fry until mushrooms darken, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil and stir-fry bok choy (and meat) for about 6-8 minutes until tender. Add corn starch and stock with cooked mushrooms and scallions during final minute or two. Sprinkle with soy sauce and lime juice. Serve on rice.

I grew Mei Qing Choi for several years. I had the worst insect problem in the spring, with slugs and/or caterpillars. Then it would bolt. So I tried growing it only in fall and it worked out beautifully!

g-gnome -

Of interest, I've never tried to collect seeds from my Joi Choy, because I guess it never occurred to me that the seeds would bear true to the parent plant, unless grown where other potential pollinizers would not affect it.

Thanks for the update - I will definitely try it. I do save tomato and pepper seeds all the time anyway. Are there any "helpful hints" in this regard?

Bejay

G-gnome & Veilchen, slugs were always a major headache for me in the spring. Last year I finally resorted to Sluggo, the beer was getting way too expensive and it didn't work anyway. There were just too many slugs. Sluggo is iron phosphate and doesn't harm other creatures, just SLUGS!!

And Digit...I have flea beetles bad. For that reason I've been hesitant to grow many of the Asian greens. I gave up on eggplant long ago. Too much work.

Thanks for the imput, everyone has been so helpful.

aka peggy,
light weight row cover (like remay) works really well against flea beetles. I keep it on the plants until they get big enough (about when the eggplant begins to blossom)
The row covers also help with germination, keeping the soil moist and helps transplants adjust.

One thing that has not been mentioned is the fact that bok choy is incredibly fast growing. This may be the reason that they are so tender and waterly even when you grow them in the early summer. Being so fast growing, the damages from slugs, flea beetles or aphids are geneally negligible (I do hand smash them though) unless you have a huge infestation.

Fliptx,

I would like to know what pesticides do you use for Squash Vine Borers? I am really looking for some effective solutions.

Thanks a lot for any help.
Jasmine

bejay
The seeds were really easy to collect, after flowering you get that nice, handy little pod ,just like on sprouts or broccoli. To be honest, I don't know what kind of bok choy seeds I originally got from the store here - I was happy just to get them at all, as around me all anyone grew were carrot, turnip and potatoes. I find that the plants only bolt quickly when you plant them too close together. And, although I'm mostly organic, I had to resort to slug repellent. Before that, I was putting out dry cat food in a little water (slugs seemed to like it), and then going out every hour until 1AM to collect them and drown them. It was getting very work intensive!!!

Moths and flea beetles--the simplest and most effective solution are row covers. And if you cover eggplant until they start to flower, you beat the flea beetle problem. At that point, they are much less appealing to the flea beetle and much less susceptible to damage.

I know row covers are not attractive in a garden. But, boy oh boy, do they ever work.

Peggy, row covers may be an answer with flea beetles. I don't have much experience using them. My primary veggie garden is so exposed that I have trouble with wind blowing just about everything away (even the plants :o(.

Some areas don't have trouble with flea beetles and some years are worse than others. In my garden, brassicas suffer the most. The worse time comes early in the season but I've learned the flea beetle larvae are feeding on the roots of the host plants throughout the year.

These flightless critters grow up in and hang out in the soil as adults. The idea of using row covers for protection reminds me of using plastic tunnels and then discovering that I'd inadvertently created a wonderful home for ants! I am not, however, saying that if wonÂt work.

One thing, the more stones or debris on the soil surface - the more problems I have with the flea beetles. So, some gardens have had very few problems and others have seen brassica devastation.

To suppress the critters, rotenone/pyrethrum spray not only on the growing plants but on the soil surface has worked well. When the plants are small, it is easy to overspray around them onto the soil. As with any pest - if you don't have 'em or can live with Âem, don't spray 'em. And, even if rotenone/pyrethrum is organic and isn't very persistent, it IS a poison.

Steve

This year was the best for the winter crops that I planted. Just can't say exactly why, except that I did use Remay clipped to my PVC cages.

My only big complaint is the carrots - not getting big enough. But I think one of the reasons is - we grow carrots when the sun is low in the southern sky, and they just don't get enough sunshine to bulb up very well. Also, growing them in small crowded boxes obviously has a lot to do with it. They need deep, loose soil and perhaps a lot more sunshine than I can give at this time of year.

One interesting note, however, I made a concerted effort to go out every morning last year, and harvest as many snails/slugs as I could find early in the morning. We don't have a lot of rain anyway, but I rarely even see the little buggers now. (I may have to take that back - as next month is our "rainy season" and perhaps they will convince me otherwise). LOL.

Thanks for the info about seeds from Joi Choy, think I'll give it a go this year.

Bejay

I have Diamacious Earth to be the best weapon I have against slugs.
If it gets real bad I put a light row of chemical nitrogen fertilizer mixed with broken oyster shell in a band on each side of the plants. It works the same as salt. Put it there after the ground drys and leave it for a few days without watering. This is my one exception to being organic and it knocks the population down enough you can continue control with other methods alot easier afterwards. I've used this method 2 times when they were so bad I couldn't do any thing else.
Anther thing you can do is plant extra lettuce heads to trap them and then cut the lettuce and place the heads in the hottest part of the compost.
After I hand pick the slugs I throw them in a bucket of salt water instead of soap. The soapy water stinks after awhile the salt bucket doesn't.

I grow it in pots and move it to the shady porch when the weather gets hot. I have covered the pots with hotcap-type apparatus and kept it growing into november. I like to plant it with chard and spinach.

Like Steve, I live in a very windy area. My corn always blows over. I do use row covers ocassionally but it's often more of a pain than it's worth. I wind up chasing the remay around the neighborhood if I don't use 2x4's to hold it down. I've had serious flea beetle problems for years and just gave up growing their favs. Runny tho, they don't bother my radishes so much but they descimate the mizuna, arugula and eggplant.

I was thinking of using an old washtub that's no longer useful, putting some large drainage holes in it and filling it with dirt. I could plant cool weather greens in the spring and fall and eggplant in the summer. Hopefully the FB's can't jump that high. In any case, it would be easier to control them in the tub. I've read that they don't like shade or moisture.

Time to start thinking about fall plantings that will avoid most of those early summer pest problems...

I once tried one or more open pollinated cultivars of Bok Choy from Evergreen for raw salads. They were bitter or had some other off-flavor that I didn't like. Perhaps they are OK when cooked, but I didn't have enough plants for cooking.

Over the last few months, I tried the brand new variety "Red Choi" from Johnny's. It has a taste similar to napa-type Chinese cabbage with no yucky off-flavors. Chewing texture of both leaf and petiole is quite nice too; not too stringy.

It is also quite ornamental. The upper leaf surface is green to bronze to red to magenta depending on age and self-shading. If you rotate the leaf, the color changes from dull red to an amazing fluorescent magenta, depending on the illumination angle. The lower leaf surface is a pure green with red veins; similar to "blood red sorrel" or idealized beet greens.

By the way, GardenWeb has an Asian Vegetable forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: Red Choi