The Whoas of Bok Choy in East TN

I occasionally receive growing questions from some of our gardener-members, and there is one question that seems to repeat itself each spring, “Why did my bok choy bolt?”  Oh, bok choy...

Bok choy is a quick-growing member of the brassica family that can handle some frosts, grows best in moderate temperatures, and cannot be grown in the summer both because of the heat and because it is day-length sensitive.  So why is it so difficult to grow here in the spring?  Well, the answer is easy: temperature fluctuations.  Bok choy cannot handle our sometimes 60 degree swings in temperature during a seven-day period and is particularly prone to bolting when we have a couple of cold nights (like we did 2 weeks ago) followed by really warm weather. 

Bok choy bolting or going to seed.  At this point, it is bitter and not of good eating quality.  This can literally happen over night in our climate, commonly after a cold snap.

The”what to do about it” has plagued me for ten years and led me to give up growing bok choy twice.  I am conducting what I believe in my heart-of-hearts to be my last bok choy trial (because I don’t really have any other ideas).  This season I am growing every organic variety on the market (hybrid and heirloom) in three different successional plantings in an attempt to corner someone.  It is plain and simple: I want a bok choy that doesn’t bolt.  

That seems like such an easy request in a vegetable that takes about 65 days from start to finish.  However, all of the varieties in our first succession bolted.  Three of the four varieties in our second succession bolted after the freeze.  However, we are currently harvesting “Prize” bok choy - an heirloom, loose head bok choy that was the only bok choy that we were able to harvest last season as well.  I don’t love it.  Like many heirlooms, it is variable in size and even appearance, it maintains some of the heirloom qualities that more refined hybrids have eliminated like spiny leaves and looseness, and it bolts, too, if you let it get very big.  That said, if it is going to make it two seasons without too much bolting, I may at least have a candidate with which I can work.  In our third succession, one variety has already bolted (at about 4” high...definitely off the list), but the other two varieties are doing well (one is “Prize”).  

Prize Choy, the only bok choy variety that we have had any success with here

So enjoy your “Prize” bok choy this week, as it is just that: a special spring treasure that is hard to come by and years in the making.  I hope to keep working with this bok choy.  I want to feel so confident in it that I am willing to plant 1200 of them every spring, cover them, weed them, water them, and then just wait to harvest them.  Instead of worrying over them for 65 days, which is what I do right now.