In Praise of Asian Vegetables

[CaptainBurrito]

Hi all

I am an avid fan of growing asian veggies, and have had plenty of failures over the years but have never given up looking for the perfect Pak Choi for growing in the UK, though it still eludes me as of yet!!

I will be growing at least a dozen different types of Asian veggies this year, including Tai Sai, Pak Choi, Komatsuna, Kailan, Ong Choi, Amaranth, Yard Long Beans, Thai Basil, Sharks Fin Melon to name just a few.

Just wondered if anyone else has tried and succeeded and what tip you have for varieties to grow.

My giant Komatsuna picked today has my expectations running high, but don't they always.

Imo the japanese varieties tend to be the easiest as they tend to have fair bolt resistance and are hardy (growing in Scotland) but also fairly resistant to heat (had them in the conservatory and got taken by surprise by 30C+ temps the other day! Stuff like mizuna and associated mustards and komatsuna are easy to grow for me. I suspect that is why komatsuna is substituted for choi sum in supermarkets.

My family has been growing chinese veg for a good while, although they stopped after a while due to us paving over most of the garden and our neighbours trees blocking most of our light... as well as our gardener repeatedly "weeding" out our new seedlings.

Success for us depends on variety, timing and weather. The window for many of the seeds we got from asia is rather short and some less than ideal weather means sub standard results. Some varieties are better and there were times we grew some monster choi sums where just one was enough for a family meal.

With pak choi, the green stemmed varieties are generally most hardy. I notice these days there are alot of varieties available in the UK which have bolt resistance although i think they are best still sown around july. Earlier sowings tend to bolt fast for us but my yellow leaf pak choi that i sowed in late april are doing not bad.

The white varieties of pak choi with long white stems are hardier and have better bolt resistance. eg. ivory. I've also heard that Joi Choi is the most bolt resistant. I've grown some this year but i suspect the taste will be inferior to the varieties we normally purchase from the chinese supermarkets. The joi choi sprouted after 2 days and are the most vigourous at seedling stage, although i snapped 2 out of 5 of them when i got overeager to transplant them. lol

Kai Lan i find is hard to grow as it requires a bit more heat and sun which we might not get in Scotland so i normally just buy them when they are available in the chinese supermarket for a brief period each year.

Sharks Fin gourds are quite easy and they grow to a good size in Scotland so i suspect they will do even better down south. Just don't get too greedy and over-fertilize with too much nitrogen heavy feed as my friend did. Then they spread like crazy with foilage but do not bear many fruits.

I'm trying various tatsois this year as i tried them from waitrose and had never seen them in China before. I love the taste and they are supposed to tolerate low temperatures well (even in summer i notice the night time temperatures are 8-10C in july here). Before they were officially 5-6 at night but in reality i think it was more 2-3 and the ones i had outside... some died, some survived but are smallish, some are bolting, some are so so. I will sow some more to see.

Choi sum are our favourite so i've sown alot of different types so i get at least some. I already sowed the purple flowering type but they bolted when at toothpick stem thickness. Some fattened up when we had a few days of sun and i ate most of them today but still they were spindly. Will try more later in the season.

I threw some mispoona and komatsuna in some old containers with perlite and a little peat... i used them previously for amaryllis so they were very poor mediums. Ironically they are doing pretty well compared to everything else in spite of it. The leaves aren't as dark as they should be but i'll give them some feed.

I have some amaranth growing and when everything else cooked in my conservatory when it was hot... those seedlings were eating up the heat! I've planted them out now but i should have probably gone for the hardier seeds from real seeds collection.

Ong Choi i gave a miss as they give me cramp. Yard long beans i think requires more heat than we get but i suppose 1/3 of a yard would still be decent. lol

I have some napa cabbages sown ( i dunno why because the supermarket grown ones are perfectly cheap and sweet).

I've sown a little bit of almost everything to give it a try. And will do some chrystanthemum greens later in the year as i know they can survive the winter.

What variety of red komatsuna did you grow? The colour on those look amazing. I've sown some comred variety myself.

Image attached of bolted purple choi sum and some of the outer leaves of the komatsuna and mispoona - thought i would eat those as they would yellow and die eventually.

Sorry for overly long post but i thought it would be nice to share my experiences as i notice chinese veg is becoming more mainstream in the UK but online alot of the info is from american growers and their climate.

[unclefudgly]

Great post Captain,

We seem to have come to the same conclusions regarding which types of pak choi etc grow best. I have just planted seeds of tai sai long stem pak choi which as you say is very bolt ressitant and grew really well for us last year. The upcoming summer equinox is generally my cue to go crazy with asian greens as the dwindling daylight helps prevent bolting.
My yard long beans are about a foot high now in the polytunnel and looking good, the purple komatsuna was from ebay so not 100% sure of variety. There's a company called CN seeds that sells commercial seed of lots of asian veggies and I have used them quite a lot in the past, so definitely worth checking out.
My only disappointment so far this year is I only managed to germinate a single Thai Round Green aubergine.

[BertieFox]

Bolting is a far reduced problem if autumn sown of course and as most of these brassicas are winter hardy, they are ideal in a tunnel for use in December and January. I had terrible problems this year, for the first time, when all my spring grown ones were infested with aphids, not something I normally associate with oriental veg.

I've been particularly impressed with Mibuna greens this spring, as although they 'bolted' and produced flower stalks far too early, I found it I cut them off and ate them, the plant went on producing loads of edible leaves for many more weeks. My favourite remains Mizuna greens which is wonderful stir fried.

Somebody above posted about chayotes, or 'Christophines' as the French call them, which I did not know was Asian. Just a tip if growing these, that they make massive growth of many, many metres and that they love lots and lots of water. If you do this and get warm weather, you will get dozens of large fruits from them. Pretty tasteless by themselves, they make a wonderful squash type vegetable to which you can add sauces or spices to give them lots of flavour.

[treepixie]

Do you grow your Pak Choi outside or in an poly tunnel?

I tried it last year and it just got shredded by the flea beetle, if you grow outside do you cover it with something like envrio mesh.

[unclefudgly]

Bertie, i'm trying the chayote purely for the tendrils, which are one of my favourite ever veggie stir fries.
Pixie - i have completely given up trying to grow decent quality asian greens outside, well except Mizuna and Komatsuna which grow like weeds. Still komatsuna grown in the tunnel is a lot more tender and less woody than outdoor grown ones.

[BertieFox]

unclefudgly.... thanks for the information about the chayote tendrils. I hadn't heard that before and it sounds like a great way of getting a double benefit from the plants. I have one plant outside so far (not doing well) and one still in a large pot, which is very healthy. Trouble is growing it under cover means it takes over the polytunnel, so I'm going to plant it immediately outside the tunnel today or tomorrow when the rain stops.

[More basil]

Does Vietnamese coriander count as an Asian vegetable? This is so far my great discovery of the year. It grows and grows without bolting, contrary to 'normal' coriander (which it isn't related to and doesn't look anything like) with a pungent in a good way flavour. I've learned that it is also known as the Lhaksa herb as it adds that special flavour to curry lhaksas. It seems to like warmth and being damp but otherwise it just sits in a corner happily providing an abundance of leaves.

[BertieFox]

Sounds very good More basil. Do you have any recommended sources for the seed? This is not a herb I have heard of before.

[unclefudgly]

Bertie, how did you get your cHayote to sprout? I lost my first two to drying out last week, have bought another 6 today that havent sprouted yet, and wondered best way to do it successfully?
Cheers

[More basil]

Sounds very good More basil. Do you have any recommended sources for the seed? This is not a herb I have heard of before.

Unfortunately no. I picked a small plant up from the garden centre out of curiosity as I hadn't seen it before and I love coriander. There seem to be a few suppliers of plants and seeds on the internet. If you draw a blank, let me know and I can try to send you a cutting.

[BertieFox]

Bertie, how did you get your cHayote to sprout? I lost my first two to drying out last week, have bought another 6 today that havent sprouted yet, and wondered best way to do it successfully?
Cheers

When we first grew them, we bought a fruit in a garden shop which already had a shoot emerging. That was one spring.

This year, we saw someone at a car boot sale selling 'plants' with a few withered shoots in October, for around 5 euros each, but he was also selling the fruit at 2 euros a kilo. So we simply bought several fruit, and left them immediately in the warm to shoot, which they did. We then potted up the whole fruit in a large pot.

We kept them in the conservatory and then the greenhouse all winter and spring, and the main shoot got very long. But in April, the main shoot died back and new ones came through.

I think you either need to spray the fruit with water regularly or plant them in a large pot very shallowly and that should stop them drying out. Perhaps the ones you bought were already dehydrated.

The French here told us to keep the fruit in a 'cave' (cellar) over winter, but we were worried they might just rot. A good fruit for planting should already have the sprouting shoot emerging from it.

Just wondered where you are getting your fruit? Is it possible that if from a market or similar, that they have been sprayed with some kind of anti-sprouting chemical? In our experience they start to sprout very easily and we didn't need to do anything special to keep them healthy prior to potting up.

[unclefudgly]

Thanks Bertie! Will try a few indoors

[CaptainBurrito]

Great post Captain,

We seem to have come to the same conclusions regarding which types of pak choi etc grow best. I have just planted seeds of tai sai long stem pak choi which as you say is very bolt ressitant and grew really well for us last year. The upcoming summer equinox is generally my cue to go crazy with asian greens as the dwindling daylight helps prevent bolting.
My yard long beans are about a foot high now in the polytunnel and looking good, the purple komatsuna was from ebay so not 100% sure of variety. There's a company called CN seeds that sells commercial seed of lots of asian veggies and I have used them quite a lot in the past, so definitely worth checking out.
My only disappointment so far this year is I only managed to germinate a single Thai Round Green aubergine.

If the white pak with tall crunchy stems or the green types do not do well here i think we can pretty much give up on pak choi. lol But today i checked my yellow leaf pak choi which have been just growing rather large leaves and they have now started to head up a little.

Komatsuna and mispoona are both still doing very well. I've taken some outer leaves to eat already. Some fertiliser and sunshine did wonders.

My tatsoi just started to grow but most are bolting sadly. Interesting given most of them are supposed to be cold hardy and yet those have performed the worst.

I actually harvested more choi sum as those really got going during the past week or so of nice weather and fertiliser. Some of the purple choi sum that had bolted have now sprouted more flowering stems, spindly but still impressed at how fast they put those out. The standard choi sum got to a decent height even though they bolted and have thin stems.

It has gotten cold again here so i'm not sure how my fresh batch of sown seeds will do.

Please let us know how the yard long beans do as i really want to grow them as i love them.

Bolting is a far reduced problem if autumn sown of course and as most of these brassicas are winter hardy, they are ideal in a tunnel for use in December and January. I had terrible problems this year, for the first time, when all my spring grown ones were infested with aphids, not something I normally associate with oriental veg.

I've been particularly impressed with Mibuna greens this spring, as although they 'bolted' and produced flower stalks far too early, I found it I cut them off and ate them, the plant went on producing loads of edible leaves for many more weeks. My favourite remains Mizuna greens which is wonderful stir fried.

Somebody above posted about chayotes, or 'Christophines' as the French call them, which I did not know was Asian. Just a tip if growing these, that they make massive growth of many, many metres and that they love lots and lots of water. If you do this and get warm weather, you will get dozens of large fruits from them. Pretty tasteless by themselves, they make a wonderful squash type vegetable to which you can add sauces or spices to give them lots of flavour.

That is amazing how the pests you guys have are so different. I always have aphids on my lilies which would be grown next to my greens but they never seemed to bother with my greens. Whilst the slugs have been kept away with copper tape i did notice some tiny holes so i think that might be flea beetles but i have never seen one yet. But there are so few holes i am not bothered at the moment.

I've ordered some mibuna so will try some of those. Also waiting for my mizuna seedlings to get big enough to transplant.

Chayotes are from the new world but all those crops spread to China during trade with european powers and we adopted things like chayotes, jicama, guavas, sweet potato as our own. Mange tout is also really popular among chinese.

---------------
Has anyone ever tried growing chinese cabbage? Always thought it would be fun to see those growing on my flower bed!

[unclefudgly]

Another month another update..

polytunnel is becoming a bit of a botanic garden, I've got about 20 species/varieties all growing like mad..

Thai Basil has been very good so far



as is the Ong Choy



in the border I've got purple amaranth, thai basil, chinese celery, padron, sweet and thai red peppers, pink brandywine and black russian tomatoes growing single truss.

[cazp]

The last couple of years my pak choi didn't thrive due to pests and bolting. I had initial success with chinese brocolii last year but for a short period only before they got attacked by bugs.

This year its been great for Pak choi and I have been growing under enviromesh. I understand the window of opportunity for picking at their peak is small though so I had better get harvesting!