I’ve been craving bok choi lately. I think subconsciously I am feeling the end of the season, the "want milk when there is no milk" syndrome. I can smell it and taste it and feel its goodness in my body. So when Jesse called us in NM last Saturday I asked if there was any left or was it about to be turned in. He was selling it at reduced price since it was flowering, aka bolting, a no-no in the general world of vegetables. When lettuce bolts the leaves become bitter, and the same is generally true of spinach, our standard American greens. And so we assume that bolting is bad. However what we have found, we who eat the garden leftovers, is that bolting does not seem to hurt the flavor of chard or bok choi. Even kale is okay once it starts to flower. It could be that we are now so used to a stronger flavor in greens and are not noticing the difference. We eat arugula when it is flowering also. Wayne would probably say that arugula is the root of our problem, but then he only eats lettuce and spinach.
So when I asked Jesse about bok choi, he told me about the customer who had bought her bok choi previously from a farmers market in California, complete with yellow flower stalk, and that she thought it was supposed to be that way. I think she is right.
Meanwhile that doesn’t mean we’ll have bok choi all summer. Eventually the old crops must be turned in both to elimnate insects and to make room for the next season’s veggie. But don’t let a little yellow flower scare you away. They look beautiful in salads, and remember, edible flowers are In.
Life on the Urban Farm 