🥬 Li Ren Choi Bok Choy: Growing Guide
What it looks like
Why this variety
Li Ren Choi is bok choy at its smallest and fastest: a dwarf baby type with tiny, tender, pale-green heads, ready in about 37 days from sowing — one of the quickest bok choys in any catalog. It is the bok choy for small beds, containers, and impatient gardeners, and a whole head is a single serving, which makes portioning gloriously simple.
Speed is a strategy in cool-season greens: a 37-day crop dodges pests, diseases, and heat waves that have more time to find a 60-day crop. Li Ren Choi’s dwarf size is part of that strategy — small plants size up fast, use less water, and fit between slower crops as a catch crop. Plant it in the gaps, harvest it before the neighbors even notice, and plant it again.
Florida translation: Li Ren Choi is made for Florida’s short cool windows, because a 37-day bok choy can squeeze a full crop into a gap between warm spells. Sow it in fall through spring, succession-sow every two weeks, and harvest young — a dwarf head left too long in warm weather bolts fast, but a dwarf head harvested on time is the tenderest bok choy you will grow.
How to grow
Sow Li Ren Choi Bok Choy directly or transplant, spacing as listed in the hero block. Full-size types need room; baby types can tuck in closer. Bok choy is a cool-season Asian green: in Florida, sow from fall through early spring, give afternoon shade if a warm spell hits, and succession-sow every two weeks for a steady supply rather than one giant glut.
Work worm castings into the bed at planting. Bok choy grows fast and shallow, so a fine, firm seedbed and steady moisture from day one matter more than fancy feeding — a checked seedling bolts, and a bolted bok choy is compost.
Water & feeding
Bok choy grows fast and drinks steadily. Keep the soil evenly moist, mulch to hold that moisture, and feed with compost or a balanced fertilizer at planting and again halfway to harvest. Dry soil plus heat is the recipe for bolting, so water before the leaves wilt, not after.
Common problems
Flea beetles love brassica seedlings, and cabbage worms love the leaves. Row cover over young plants solves most of it, and hand-picking handles the rest. Bolting is the other enemy: plant for cool weather, keep soil moist, and harvest promptly when heads size up — a warm week can push a mature head to flower in days.
Harvest
Cut Li Ren Choi Bok Choy whole at the base when heads are full and firm, before a flower stalk appears — or harvest outer leaves as needed and let the center keep growing. Baby heads, cut young, are tender enough for salads; full heads are made for stir-fries, soups, and braising, stalks first into the pan, leaves a minute later.
Nerdy fact: Li Ren Choi’s 37-day sprint makes it one of the fastest heading greens you can grow — from seed to stir-fry in barely more than a month, which is faster than most seed packets take to arrive if you order them late.
Saving seeds
Li Ren Choi is a hybrid pak choi — Gowan lists it as a hybrid type and Park Seed sells it as “Li Ren Choy Hybrid” — so saved seed will not come true to the tight, vase-shaped baby heads. Buy fresh seed each season and sow directly or transplant, harvesting the baby heads at about 40 days. The full method is in the Saving seeds section of the Bok Choy guide.