Chinese Cabbage (Pak Choi)

Pak Choi 'White Stem' (Brassica rapa) is about the fastest thing you can sow in a vegetable bed and still call a crop: crisp white stems and mild green leaves, ready to pick within weeks. It stays compact, so it grows as happily in a pot on a balcony as in an open bed.

What it does

• Ready in weeks, not months. Baby leaves can be cut as little as 3 to 4 weeks after planting.
• Crisp stems, mild leaves. The white stems hold their crunch through a stir fry or a soup, and the flavour is mild enough to use raw.
• Pick and come again. Outer leaves can be taken regularly while the plant keeps growing, so one sowing feeds you over weeks.
• Compact habit. It asks for very little room, which makes it one of the few brassicas that genuinely works in a container.

How to use it

Sow into well drained soil at the depth given on the packet and water regularly. This is a fast, leafy crop and it wants steady moisture rather than a wet and dry cycle. Space plants 20cm to 25cm apart for full sized plants, or sow deliberately tighter if you are after baby leaves and thin as you pick.

It can be sown year round, with autumn and spring the strongest seasons. Sow a short row at a time rather than the whole packet. Succession sowing is what keeps greens on the bench continuously instead of arriving in a single glut.

What it suits

Between slower crops. Vegetable beds and raised beds, where it slots between slower crops and is out of the ground again before they need the space.

Balconies and courtyards. Pots and containers on balconies and in courtyards, given a container deep enough to hold moisture through a warm afternoon.

Not a single sowing. Continuous succession sowing for a standing supply of greens. It is not a sow once and forget crop: it matures fast, and its best growth comes in mild to cool conditions rather than peak summer heat. Seed is delivered Australia wide,.

Related products and reading

• Browse the seed range
• Getting a vegetable garden producing
• Growing food in a small space