Bok Choi

Last year we tried bok choi for the first time, with only two plants and were surprisingly pleased. I'd always found bok choi to just be bland and watery any time I've bought it in the store. But boy does it ever taste good fresh from the garden. It's crisp and sweet. The stalks taste a bit like celery but without that bitterness that can sometimes make celery unpleasant. I like to even eat it raw.
So this year we decided to grow a whole row of bok choi. It grows very quickly, but unfortunately something was eating it almost as quickly. I would find little holes in the leaves, which started to become very big holes. I sprayed the bok choi with a garlic-pepper spray, which I made from a "You Grow Girl" recipe. It didn't seem to be having much effect. I though perhaps it was slugs or snails (I've seen a lot of the latter this year) so I was going to put beer out.
Then last Thursday I went to the farmer's market. One of the farmers was selling nice bunches of bok choi. While they also had some holes, there were far fewer than on ours. So I asked him what were the culprits. He said that these type of greens get eaten by a small black beetle that comes out during the heat of mid-day. All he does is cover the bok chois with a white cloth similar to cheesecloth, which keeps out these beetles. So I did some research and discovered that you can get this cloth - called floating row cover - at Lee Valley Tools. Conveniently, I can walk to Lee Valley's downtown store from work so I got a 50' roll of floating row cover on Friday. After only a couple days of the bok choi (as well as the kale, collards and swiss chard) being covered, we've seen a marked difference in the amount of holes in the leaves. The floating row cover lets the sunshine and rain through, but is very finely woven so insects can't get through. We've secured it to the ground by using chopsticks as tent-pegs.
Last night we had our first meal made with bok choi. I made a stir-fry with bok choi, carrots, tofu, thai basil, coriander and peanuts. Yum.