🥬 Mei Qing Choi Bok Choy
What it looks like
Why this variety
Mei Qing Choi is the baby bok choy on Johnny’s chart: 45 days, 8–10 inches tall, with pale green stems and a mild, delicate flavor. It is the variety for gardeners who want bok choy fast and in quantity, because its compact size means more plants per bed and a quicker turnaround.
Small does not mean lesser. Baby bok choy halves beautifully for the grill, fits whole into a soup pot, and cooks in about three minutes — which is the entire weeknight argument for growing your own greens. Its mildness also makes it the bok choy for people who find the big white-stemmed types a little too cabbagey.
If you are new to choosing between cultivars, the Varieties Matter guide explains why the name after the plant matters as much as the plant itself. And if you want the whole clan at a glance, the broader Bok Choy guide covers bok choy generally.
How to grow
In Florida, bok choy is a cool-season star: sow it from fall through early spring, give it afternoon shade if a warm spell hits, and harvest before the heat turns it to flower. A spring sowing that bolts is not a failure — it is a lesson in timing, and the fall sowing will forgive you.
Sow 6–8 inches apart, or closer if you plan to harvest some as baby greens and let the rest size up. Keep the soil moist and the bed mulched; compact plants dry out faster than big ones. Succession-sow every two weeks through the cool season.
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 and cabbage loopers are the main pests; row cover at sowing time is the simplest fix. Heat is the other threat — a warm spell can push even a 45-day variety to bolt, so in a warm climate, plant Mei Qing Choi for fall and winter, not midsummer.
Harvest
Harvest whole heads when they are compact and firm, or cut outer leaves and let the center regrow. Baby bok choy is at its best just before the center stalk starts to elongate — that elongation is the first sign of bolting, and the flavor turns sharper after it.
Nerdy fact: The pale green stems of Mei Qing Choi are not under-ripe white stems — they are the variety’s own color, and they stay tender even when the plant is fully grown.
Saving seeds
Mei Qing Choi is the baby bok choy on Johnny’s chart: 45 days, 8 to 10 inches tall, with pale green stems and a mild, delicate flavor — the variety for gardeners who want bok choy fast and in quantity, because its compact size means more plants per bed and a quicker turnaround. It is an F1 hybrid (West Coast Seeds lists it as “Mei Qing Choi F1”, Sakata as a hybrid), so it does not come true from seed: saved seed would give you variable plants, not another Mei Qing Choi. Sow 6 to 8 inches apart, succession-sow every two weeks through the cool season, and in Florida grow it fall through early spring — a spring sowing that bolts is a lesson in timing, and the fall sowing will forgive you. The full method is in the Saving seeds section of the Bok Choy guide.