When we say bok choy growing bug, we're really talking about everything from plant bolting to spacing the seeds and choosing the correct time to institute the veggie. Not that bok choy is a complicated vegetable. The lettuce-cousin is like shooting fish in a barrel to abound and doesn't require any more care than the other vegetables in your veggie patch.

Bok Choy Growing Problems

Still, some problems might ingather upwardly even when you accept done everything right. Pests for example, are uninvited guests crashing the bok choy party and ruining the succulent leaves of the establish. We put together some of the most mutual bok choy growing problems and offer more than than ane way to fix each ane of them.

Bok Choy Found Commodities

Bolting usually signals the finish of bok choy as a succulent vegetable and renders the leaves and stalks totally inedible. It's something to avoid at all costs, non just for bok choy but also for any other vegetable you grow to eat. The only reason you'd want to exit your bok choy to reach that stage is if you want to harvest the seeds. Simply seeing as the bok choy seeds are quite inexpensive, it's both a waste of time and good soil to get down that route.

So what causes your tender and succulent bok choy to start flowering? Usually, it'due south a shock caused by changes in temperatures, drought, or transplanting. When the roots sense the heat change in the soil, they trigger the establish to become into the flowering phase. And then a long stem grows out of the center of the found conveying a flower bud. All the institute'south resource go into that single stalk and the cluster of flowers it carries. The leaves turn biting and stringy and get inedible.

How to Set up It

The merely way to fix a bolting bok choy is to prevent it from happening. Once the plant goes to seed, at that place's no turning back the clock and you volition have to remove it past the roots. And then for a cool-flavor vegetable similar bok choy, you lot need to take the post-obit measures to prevent it from bolting.

  • Choose a bok choy variety all-time suited to your zone. Some varieties are slow to commodities and will tolerate rising temperatures without going to flowering.
  • Establish bok choy in a spot that gets 6 hours of lord's day but also gets partial shade in the afternoon.
  • Protect the bok choy with a tarp to create shade as the spring warms into summer.
  • If yous're transplanting bok choy, do and so when the seedlings are still young and as shortly as the soil temperature rises above 50 degrees F.
  • Bok choy needs i inch of h2o per week. Less than that means the soil will be dry out most of the time which leads to stress and bolting. Too much watering can also cause the vegetable to bolt.
  • Harvest bok choy as early as possible. Don't look until the last minute to gather the delicious leaves.

Regrow Bok Choy from a Stalk

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When yous're a gardener, and so every time you pick a found or a leaf, you always wonder if yous can plant that in your garden. This goes for bok choy besides. When you lot concur a stalk of the vegetable, chances are you lot'll wonder if you tin regrow it. The reply is aye you can. Seeds are not the only way to start bok choy. A good for you bok choy head is all you need to accept a fully grown plant that yields fresh and juicy leaves. So how practise you go about regrowing bok choy from a stem?

How to Fix It

Instead of throwing away a perfectly skilful bok choy caput, why non just grow information technology back in the garden? And if you don't have a garden, a small-scale pot with some potting mix volition do just fine. Here's how to do information technology.

  • Cut off the base of operations of the head to accept a fresh cut.
  • Fill up a basin with warm water and place the head in it making sure the cut end is facing upward.
  • Place the basin on a window sill facing the sunday. Moist the centre of the bok choy occasionally to forestall it from drying up.
  • Every couple of days, replace the water in the bowl to prevent mold and leaner buildup.
  • Within a week, the leaves will go yellow while the center of the cutting shows signs of growth.
  • Fill a pot with potting mix and water it to get it moist but non wet.
  • Dig a hole in the middle about 3 inches deep and place the bok choy caput in the pigsty so it'due south nearly cached. Fill back with soil and firm it.
  • Keep the medium moist all the fourth dimension and scout the bok choy grow in a flourishing vegetable.

Bok Choy In Containers

Nosotros already saw how you lot can grow bok choy out of a leftover caput that you were going to throw away in the trash. But sometimes you'll need to abound bok choy in containers out of necessity. Say, for case, your spring goes from the last frost to roaring summertime without a intermission in the heart. Every bit a cool-flavor vegetable, bok choy thrives in moderate temperatures and warm sun that doesn't make it wilt and wither. When you grow the vegetable in a container, you can take it inside when the afternoon sun starts baking the garden.

Vegetable container growing is also gaining popularity considering of its convenience and since information technology allows you to abound more than ane plant in a relatively small space. The only catch is that different vegetables require unlike containers so the trick is knowing which plants to grouping together.

How to Fix It

Since we're talking nigh bok choy, we'll focus on how you can grow this delicate vegetable in a container.

  • First, you lot'll demand a medium-size container at least 20 inches in diameter and 12 inches deep. That container will take exactly ane bok choy. For ii plants, double the size, and for three bok choy vegetables, use a container triple the original size.
  • Fill up the container with full general-purpose potting mix and add in i-third of organic compost and chopped bark. The organic materials will loosen the soil, improve water retentivity and keep the vegetable fed.
  • Plant the seeds in the soil and space them to let the grown vegetable room.
  • Water the potting mix and go along it moist until the seeds germinate.
  • Caring for the bok choy in a container is the same every bit caring for information technology growing in the garden. For more information, refer to this commodity about caring for bok choy.

Bok Choy Spacing

If your bok choy veggies wait smaller than usual or they're infested with diseases and pests, chances are they're ready besides closely together in the garden. Information technology'due south not but that the poor air apportionment and high humidity levels promote fungal infections and diseases. The roots hugger-mugger are robust and spread everywhere in search of moisture and nutrients. These roots don't play nice even if they belong to the aforementioned species. When competing with other vegetables and weeds, the bok choy veggie becomes stressed which opens the door for virus and bacterial infections.

How to Fix It

The average bok choy grows to a decent 2 feet high and one and a half feet wide. That'southward no small-scale size for a vegetable. And that requires enough space in all directions to allow the establish to grow without being disturbed.

For these big bok choy varieties, y'all'll need to infinite each plant 12 inches abroad from the side by side ane. And if you're planting them from seeds, you'll need to thin the seedlings out.

Holes in Bok Choy Leaves

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For a leafy vegetable, bok choy plants are remarkably resilient to many diseases that affect other less hardy plants. Merely i thing you tin can always count on when growing a patch of bok choy is the pesky pests. They'll crawl up from the soil or country from the heaven and lay their eggs in the deep recesses of the vegetable for the larvae to feed on the juicy leaves.

The first signs you'll find are holes in the bok choy leaves. Get a closer await at the leaves and soon yous'll discover the larvae chewing at the leaves and stalks. These are vegetable weevil larvae and the adult weevils are near probable chewing at the roots of the bok choy underground.

Vegetable weevils are cool-season pests that become agile during the moderate seasons as well as the winter but go fallow in the summer. Since bok choy is also a cool-season vegetable, at that place's no avoiding this pest. Or is there?

How to Fix

Even if the vegetable weevil seems to have fix its biological clock and lifecycle to the bok choy's spotter, you can even so outmaneuver the crafty pest.

  • Turn up the soil between crops to kill the vegetable weevil every bit they pupate in the soil. Keep the turned-upward soil nether the sun for a week at to the lowest degree before planting new seeds.
  • Constitute bok choy in the fall instead of the spring.
  • Rotate the vegetable every couple of years to starve out the pests lying dormant in the soil.
  • Employ row covers to protect the plants from invading vegetable weevils.
  • Introduce rove beetles and ground beetles to your garden. These are the vegetable weevil's natural enemies. They hunt for the insect at night.

Bok Choy Planting Fourth dimension

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Every bit a biennial plant, bok choy has 2 planting times every yr. Either in the leap or in the fall. If you have a long growing flavor and your fall flavour is not marked by an early on frost, yous can certainly constitute bok choy early in the leap and then again in the fall. But as you lot tin can imagine, each planting time has its ain rules and specific atmospheric condition.

How to Fix Information technology

For spring planting, you should start bok choy seeds as early in the spring as you tin. Unless you take a long and cool spring, you lot'll demand to have reward of the moderate temperatures of the early on spring. Otherwise, the steady increment of the temperature could crusade the bok choy to commodities even at a relatively young phase of development.

You tin can start the seeds in a tray indoors earlier the concluding frost, then transplant the seedlings to the garden once the soil temperature outdoors hits the l degrees F. marker. Don't delay transplanting the vegetable, since the daze of transplantation tin can also trigger bolting.

For fall planting, you should wait until the summer has cooled off before planting the seeds straight in the soil. Choose a sunny spot in the garden but provide temporary shade to protect the seedlings against the afternoon sunday.

Make sure to time the autumn planting to allow the bok choy to grow and mature earlier the start frost in your area.