New garden plants

I think it was a year ago right after the first of the year I got to reading some garden books that came in the mail and read about some greens called bok choy. Marge and I really enjoy Chinese stir fry, so I thought about trying to make our own stir fry. So I ordered some different kinds of choy to give them a try. There was a Baby Bok Choy, a Suzhou Baby Bok Choy and a Purple Lady Bok Choy. I believe there was a couple others, but can't remember them. I also ordered some Yod Fah Chinese Broccoli as well. I read about them in what information I could find, but after getting the seed, along came COVID, and it kind of changed everything.

I planted them in my little seed starter trays, and it all came right up. Neat looking little plants and kind of pretty. Most of them were green, but the purple really stood out from the others. We had put down the plastic mulch in our hill garden, so we went ahead and planted the little choy plants and the Chinese broccoli, and it took right off. They were really easy to grow. But then as they grew, we weren't real sure when to pick them. You can study all the books you want and read and devour information, but there are times when a hands-on show me is needed. We needed some hands-on show me info.

The Yod Fah Chinese Broccoli grew right up and was kind of weird. There was some thick stalks and then some thin stalks and flowers, and we didn't know what to do. We were waiting for a broccoli head to form. It doesn't on this plant. We waited too long. Finally, I picked some and just ate it raw. Pretty darn good. But by this time it was going to seed, so scratch the Yod stuff. I thought, we'll have to try it again another day.

Kind of the same with the choy. It grew right up from the starts I'd planted in my work room and turned into nice looking plants. But the same question came up which was, "Now what?" So by the time we kind of figured it out, it was too late. Choy is kind of like cabbage and smells like cabbage when it spoils. I think there is only one thing that smells worse than spoiled cabbage, and it's in our cat litter box. So we ditched the choy plants on the compost pile. One thing I've learned with my gardening is when it's time to throw something away, then pitch it. My tendency all my life has been to never throw stuff away because we might need it tomorrow or next year or who knows when. Simply put, pitch it.

Fast forward to this year. I go through my seed in the early spring and see what I have left from the past and make a list of what I need to order new. So as I was going through my old seed this spring, I came across some choy packs of seed. I thought, what the heck, let's give it a try. I planted about half a dozen Baby Bok Choy, a dozen Suzhou Baby Bok Choy and half a dozen Purple Lady Bok Choy into seed starter trays probably in mid March. That would give them about 45 days to grow before transplanting them about May 1.

We went ahead and transplanted them and they grew and turned into some neat kind of pretty plants. We watched them grow and develop, but we still weren't sure when to pick and try. Finally, about a week or two ago, I picked one of each. They were really pretty. The bugs simply love the purple choy, but mostly left the green choy alone. I looked up some recipes on DuckDuckGo and found some of recipes of how to cook choy. (Martha Stewart, I think.) I kind of cut it apart and sliced the white and purple stems into half inch pieces, which we put in a No. 12 Griswold along with some olive oil. The recipe said to use a wok, but we only had cast iron skillet. We cooked the stems till they were getting kind of tender and then added the cut up leaves. The purple leaves had way too much bug damage, so compost pile for them.

I added some garlic salt and some garlic pieces and Marge added soy sauce. We let that simmer for a while and gave it a try and it was pretty darn good. Not as good as we buy at the little Chinese place, but pretty good for a couple of rookies. We found that the purple isn't as good as the green, and it's tougher. We also found that the smaller the heads of choy the more tender they were. We gave it another try, only Marge put some cut up onion and some bell pepper pieces in the cast iron skillet before adding the choy. I think that made a big improvement. I added the soy this time and over did the soy. It definitely tasted like soy sauce. I'll go slow on the soy next time.

I got to wondering if we could freeze it for later, so did some checking on the internet. Turns out one can freeze it and there were two schools of thought, which figures. Most of the time there are opposing views on everything. One view was to make sure and blanch the stems, and the other view said one didn't need to. I don't think we will. The one that said don't blanch the stems also said to not wash off the stems. We are going to wash them and also check real carefully for worms. Don't want to find a worm in my choy.

We are also going to shrink wrap our cut-up pieces and leaves. I think they will last longer and be more flavorful. We bought a shrink wrap machine last week, so this will be a first for us. I had read the reviews online and checked out the top 10 shrink wrappers for 2021, but all 10 were sold by one company. I wondered if the 10 best were the real 10 best or were the only ones tested by the company selling them. Crazy when one has to question most every piece of information as to whether it's really true. So we asked someone who sold them and used them, and he gave us the lowdown. He said to not buy the cheaper one nor the expensive one but the mid priced one, so we did. I think there is even a five-year warranty. So now we shrink wrap some choy.

While I was checking out the different kinds of choy on the Internet I came across a winter choy called Yellow Heart Winter Choy. This sounds like it might last through the winter in one of our high tunnels. Last winter we planted Rainbow Chard in one of them, and it was beautiful all winter. Maybe this Winter Choy will do the same. Oh yeah, I planted Rainbow Chard in our hill garden a month ago or so. The deer thoroughly enjoyed them.