Can you Grow Your Own Kimchi?

Q. Sam in Oklahoma City writes: "I was thinking about planting a "kimchi garden" in the fall. In a small, raised bed, I want to grow Napa cabbage, carrots, daikon radish, garlic, ginger, and scallions. Can all these vegetables be planted together around the same time? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, and we love your show here in Oklahoma on KGOU!"

A. And thanks right back to KGOU and its listeners for their early and continued support of You Bet Your Garden!

Strictly a Spring or Fall crop, Napa (aka "Chinese") cabbage is the main ingredient in kimchi (although, as a Korean kimchi expert says on YouTube: "Give any vegetable to a Korean and they'll use it to make kimchi").

Cabbage can't take any kind of summer heat--especially in areas like Oklahoma. And because of your typically torrid summers (as if any weather can be considered 'typical' these days), fall planting is highly recommended. Seeds will take around 100 days to produce nice, ripe heads; 80 days or less if you start with starts, which you should be able to find at a local independent garden center. Either way, harvest after the first light frost, which will concentrate the plant's natural sugars, but don't wait for a freeze.

Same with carrots; plant in September and harvest right after the first light frost. Same with daikon radish; just be aware that unlike regular radishes, daikons take a LONG time to mature.BUT, like all radishes, you can eat (or use) it at any stage of growth. Plant it in September and ("repeat after me boys and girls"): harvest after the first light frost, which will concentrate the plant's natural sugars, but don't wait for a freeze.

Garlic is one of the reasons I picked your question for this time of year. September is prime planting time, so get your biggest, nicest cloves with intact wrappers in the ground ASAP. Don't follow the old advice of waiting until November; September planting gives you bigger bulbs at harvest time. Clip off any seed pods that appear at the top of the plants in summer and harvest whole bulbs when the bottom third of the plants have turned brown. (Late June/early July in my Pennsylvania garden.)

Digression for first-time garlic planters: Buy the highest quality garlic bulbs you can; this is NOT a place to save money--and besides, if you do it right, you shouldn't have to buy more planting bulbs in the future, because using the biggest cloves from your own harvest is the best! If you live in a climate with mild winters, grow softneck varieties; they store well and have a mild taste. Where winters are cold, go with hardneck varieties; they do NOT store well, but have vastly superior flavor and beautiful red/purple wrappings. Hard necks also have much larger cloves in each bulb, whereas softnecks produce an annoying number of small cloves.

Acceptable sources for that first run (in descending order of desirability) are bulbs from a garlic growing friend or neighbor; then garlic from a REAL local farmer's market (that means the people selling it are the ones who grew it; it's sure to be locally grown, which is a big plus.But make sure it IS truly local; many {quote} "Farmer's Markets" have sellers who buy their produce in bulk at the local food distribution center, which is as bad as cheap supermarket garlic); next is garlic purchased from a seed catalog or online from a reputable company; and finally, organic garlic from a supermarket that carries a lot of organic products, which won't be treated to resist sprouting.

Please do not start with cheap generic supermarket garlic. I know that MANY gardeners like to dumpster-dive to salvage almost-dead plants or only buy plants with the lowest price--but this is a classic case of "garbage in; garbage out" and NOT the time to be foolishly thrifty. Cheap supermarket garlic will likely be from China (which is far from 'local'), grown with heavy use of pesticides and toxic fertilizers and be treated with sprouting inhibitors. (You want your garlic to sprout as soon as possible after planting.) Do the right thing.

Plant fast-growing scallions in the fall, timed to be ready with the other stuff. Ginger has a short and very precise growth window. Break good-sized chunks off a large rhizome and plant when nights are reliably in the fifties. Starting those chunks indoors a month ahead of time in pots containing a mix of organic potting soil and compost will give you much bigger bulbs (and the green sprouts they produce are adorable). Harvest ginger BEFORE any frost.

You'll find LOTS of good kimchi recipes online. Here's the basics: fill a clean jar with one head of chopped-up Napa cabbage and salt. Let it sit for a bit and then rinse out the salt and water three times, then add smallish amounts of (diced) garlic and ginger. If you want spicy red kimchi, add a cup of powdered hot pepper.

Optional ingredients generally include scallions, radish, carrots, and/or onion. Seal the jar and let it sit out for a day or two, then refrigerate for at least a week. Then it can be stored indefinitely in the fridge.