Though I did not post any official garden goals for 2024, I did write a couple down in my personal notes; for one, I want to grow my own kimchi (a recent delicious obsession). For me, the ingredients I can grow will be: cabbage, daikon radish, leek, garlic, apple (I will buy ginger, chili flakes, salt and fish sauce to complete my recipe). I've got all of these going, though I have a somewhat disappointing amount of cabbage this year.
But I recently found a recipe variation calling for pak choi instead of cabbage, and this may be the answer to my problem! Pak choi is much quicker to grow, doesn't take up so much room, and is softer/crisper than the ball headed cabbage variety I have--authentic kimchi is made with Napa cabbage, closer to pak choi in texture and shape (I wasn't able to find Napa seed).
The half-empty cabbage bed has now become the pak choi bed, planted out with about 25-30 small seedlings, and the very end of it has three short rows of daikon radish (actually a miniature daikon variety, carrot size rather than those full sized monster roots). The whole of the bed is fully netted, thanks to the help of the mother, here for a short visit. We carefully enclosed the entire bed in insect mesh in the hopes of protecting it from cabbage butterflies, pigeons and ducks alike. So far so good.
If I get acceptable cabbages, they will go into kimchi, and hopefully I will get some nice pak choi for it too. Here's looking forward to some excellent kimchi.
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