Asian Greens for March: Yukina Savoy in the Hoophouse

I wrote about outdoor Yukina Savoy going into the winter, in my October post. Re-read that to get details of days to maturity, cold-tolerance (10F/-12C outdoors) and the differences between the open-pollinated Yukina Savoy and hybrids such as Koji. Five months after that posting we are harvesting the last of the over-wintered Yukina Savoy in the hoophouse. For us, this is a cooking green, not a salad crop. It’s delicious and easy to cook. A little robust for salads, for most people.

In March we are starting our hoophouse crop transition to early summer crops (tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers) and meanwhile we are enjoying harvests of arugula, brassica salad mix, Bulls Blood beet greens, chard for salad and cooking greens, Russian kales, leaf lettuce, lettuce heads, baby lettuce mix, mizuna and frilly mustards, radishes, scallions, senposai, spinach, tatsoi, turnips and greens and yukina savoy.

We do two hoophouse plantings of Yukina Savoy: the first transplanted from outdoors on October 6, feeds us from December 5 to January 31. The second, transplanted from outdoors on October 24, feeds us from January 8 to early March, sometimes to mid-March. This spring several crops are bolting earlier than hoped-for! We have had some back-and-forth temperatures, which can trigger bolting. Among brassicas, Yukina Savoy is relatively heat-tolerant. This is part of why we do the second planting – it helps us extend the brassica season until we can harvest more outdoor kale.

We transplant Yukina Savoy at 12″ (30 cm) apart in the row, with 4 rows to a 4′ (1.2 m) bed. For a hundred people with lots of other vegetables available, we plant 60 in the first planting and 40 in the second. There are too many other crops competing for space in late October for us to plant more than 40.

Initially we harvest this crop by the leaf, until we see the stems start to elongate prior to bolting, when we cut the whole plant. (It is a loose head type of crop, so don’t wait for a firm head to form!)  Actually we pull first, then cut off the head, then bang two roots together to shed the soil, and put the pulled root stumps on the bed to dry out and die. This is easier than cutting first and pulling later. If they do bolt before we get round to pulling them, I have added the pretty yellow flowers to the salad mix. Like all other brassica flowers, these are edible.

Kitazawa Seeds tells us that Yukina Savoy is a Brassica rapa Pekinensis group, for those with a love of brassica botany and those saving seeds. Also those, like us, looking for nematode-resistant vegetables. Brassica juncea are the most resistant brassicas. Kitazawa classifies it as a loose head type of Chinese cabbage.