Bolting Bok Choi Batman!

After a week and a half of dry, reasonably warm weather, all of my Bok Choi has bolted. Very sad.

Doing some digging online - I've found this is not an uncommon problem, particularly for newbies like me.

One forum on gardenweb.com had this issue as a subject, and had this post:

"I am Chinese. I know the answer! We eat bok chai in two stages. One is when they are young like a transplant (preferred) and the other is when they grow much bigger ~1/2 lbs. If you need big chai you need to transplant the young ones around september, october and you will get big ones in the spring time. If you plant them in spring just harvet them when they are young. All of them will go flowering in april. It dill well for me when I was in New Jersey."

So one aspect of this is that it seems we should have harvested this round of bok choi when it was still small. The good news is that bok choi sounds like a great over-wintering (year round) crop!

There was also a post on the same page about being mindful of the varietal of bok choi one uses- with an eye towards heat tolerance (There are lots of southern Asia brassicas). I found a great site that specializes in Asian vegetable seeds for future reference. (Lots of potential there)

The other thing is that I think I planted the bok choi in the wrong location.... it's a cool weather crop, and this location gets nearly perfect full sun. I've got a location in mind that gets allot more shade for the next try. So the first round of bok choi has been a failure - but I've learned allot and I've found a new seed source!

Since full sun was part of the 'problem' here... once my helpers pulled the bok choi out and I amended the soil with compost, we planted a lemon cucumber.