# Late Planting of Bok Choy- Beeyoutiful !



## RCorl (Mar 24, 2012)

I seeded 3- 100 ft rows of bok choy on July 20. In August I ate all the bok choy I could stand, gave some away and fed lots to my chickens and rabbits. This barely made a dent in the amount of bok choy plants that I had. Then around mid September, it started to bolt. Before long, I had 3 foot tall flower stalks covered in small yellow flowers that the bees were going nuts for. When I would walk out between the rows, the buzzing was louder than a busy day at the local barber shop.
The best part of this however, is today is November 17, its about 58 deg., the flowers are still yellow, and the bees are still working it like crazy. We had frost back in mid October, and several nights have been in the low 20s, and it is still green and flowering.
Moral of my story: Make a late planting of bok choy and you will have bee feed late into November.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

I had a similar experience (well, not me but I saw it). I'm a Master Gardener, and our local association has a Display Garden that includes a large vegetable garden from which we donate all the veggies to the local food bank. One of the guys decided to plant oriental cabbage a couple years ago in the spring. Unfortunately, the oriental cabbages (Bok Choy, Pak Choy and similar) are all long day bloomers, meaning that they bolt in long days. Planted in the spring, they will bloom as soon as they have six or so leaves, so we had a row of 18" tall yellow flowers rather than cabbages around mid June.

Bee were lined up to get to the flowers, never have seen anything like it. Very busy, it was quite a display.

Luckily for me the current fad around here is to plant annual rye and turnips for a cover crop in the fields corn has been in. Many of the turnips bloom due to crowding, so the bees get some pollen and nectar late in the year. Most of them are a mile or so away, so I only see pollen on warm, quite days, but they still bring some in.

I've seen dandelion pollen coming in on Christmas day, it's still usually warm for a few days at a time until late December around here.

Peter


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## primeonly27 (Jun 23, 2011)

Did this same exact thing in the spring time this past season in California. The seed we collected and plan to have it in a crop rotation with buckwheat and sunflower. If you do nothing to the Bok Choy and till it under after seed it will regrow on its own in the same place next year.


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