In progressGrower's Journey
Tasmania Winter Grown Bok Choy & Wong Bok 2026
Hey everyone!
This winter in store we’ve been growing a handful of different brassicas! Here is our full update and the work we’ve done in our medium Vegepod out the front, which has two types of bok choy and wong bok.
Despite the product tags saying pak choy and bok choy, these names are often used for the same or very similar leafy brassica crops. In this Vegepod, we’re growing a green variety and a purple cultivar, giving us a beautiful contrast in foliage colour.
Our goal with this Vegepod is to create beautiful statement specimens, not just a normal crop. We want to see how big and impressive we can grow these leafy greens using a controlled CANNA Terra nutrient program!
The medium in this Vegepod is CANNA Terra Professional, a peat-based growing medium designed to provide a stable root environment while still allowing us to feed with a controlled nutrient program.
For the first few weeks, we’ll just be using water, as we don’t want to burn the new, developing roots while the plants are settling in.
Over the growing period, we’ll be using CANNA Terra Vega as our base nutrient, and Cannazym and Rhizotonic as our additives. So, let’s deep dive into what our growing medium, base nutrient, and additives do!
CANNA Terra Professional
For this Vegepod, we’re using CANNA Terra Professional as our growing medium. This is a peat-based medium designed to provide a stable and reliable environment for the roots while still allowing us to control the feeding program as the plants develop.
The medium contains peat, perlite, and lime. The peat helps retain moisture, the perlite assists with aeration and drainage, and the lime helps buffer the growing medium while also providing calcium and magnesium.
Unlike a heavily fertilised soil mix, where a large amount of the plant’s nutrition may already be present in the medium, this setup allows us to be more intentional with how we feed the plants over time.
The Terra medium provides the physical structure, moisture retention, and root support, while our CANNA nutrient program provides the main nutrition throughout the grow.
For leafy brassicas like bok choy and wong bok, this gives us a great balance: a stable root zone, consistent moisture, and the ability to adjust nutrition as the plants grow.
CANNA Terra Vega
CANNA Terra Vega is a blend of the major nutrients and trace elements needed by the plant. This specific nutrient is what we call our base nutrient.
It is higher in nitrogen, which supports leafy vegetative growth, chlorophyll production, and overall plant development. This is especially important for crops like bok choy and wong bok, where we are focusing on strong leaf and stem growth rather than fruiting.
Along with the major nutrients, Terra Vega also includes key trace elements that help support plant health and nutrient uptake. Trace elements are important when fertilising plants, even though they are only needed in very small quantities. Many of these trace elements help support enzyme function, chemical reactions within the plant, and the plant’s ability to grow to the best of its ability.
If you want to know more about trace elements, let us know and we can make a post about it!
Terra Vega is a nutrient that we will be using throughout the main vegetative growing period. We’ll go into more depth with this product in a later post.
CANNA Cannazym
CANNA Cannazym is an enzyme product that helps break down dead root material in the growing medium. This supports a cleaner and healthier root-zone environment by helping remove old root matter that could otherwise become a food source for unwanted bacteria or fungi.
By helping break down this dead root material, Cannazym can also assist with maintaining good conditions around the root zone and supporting new root growth.
Cannazym contains multiple enzymes that assist in breaking down organic material in the root zone, and it is commonly used to help support overall plant health and root development.
CANNA Rhizotonic
CANNA Rhizotonic is an algae-based additive that can be used at different stages of plant growth to support root development, transplant recovery, and general plant stress response.
This additive can be used across a range of different growing media and is commonly used when plants are young, recently transplanted, or recovering from stress. Strong roots are one of the most important parts of healthy plant growth, and Rhizotonic is a great option when trying to encourage that early root development.
With this medium and nutrient program, we’ve been able to create a great setup for our medium Vegepod.
Something to note with our choice of nutrients and additives is that we’ve selected them with leafy growth in mind. These plants are leafy brassicas, meaning they need plenty of nitrogen to support strong vegetative growth.
But nutrients and additives aside, what else has been going on with this Vegepod?
Planting
Before the Vegepod filled out, we started by setting up the medium Vegepod with CANNA Terra Professional and positioning our seedlings before planting them in.
At this stage, the Vegepod looked quite empty, but that was intentional. Because our goal was to grow these into large statement specimens rather than a tightly packed crop, we wanted to give each plant enough space to develop properly.
We placed the green bok choy, purple pak choy/bok choy, and wong bok seedlings across the Vegepod first to work out the spacing. Once we were happy with the layout, we planted them into the medium, gently firmed them in, and left the plant tags in place so we could keep track of each variety as they grew.
For the first stage after planting, we kept things simple and used plain water only. Young seedlings can be sensitive after transplanting, so we wanted to let the roots settle into the medium before introducing the full nutrient program.
Even though the planting looked small at the start, brassicas can grow quickly once they establish. Leaving that extra room also helps with airflow, light exposure, and makes it easier to inspect the plants as they develop.
Update
Well, two weeks into our planting, we noticed an issue: holes in our leaves! A tell-tale sign of a pest nibbling on our crop.
Upon further inspection, we found the issue: cabbage moth caterpillars. These are a common pest on brassicas, and there are a few ways to deal with them.
Our first method was mechanical removal, which simply means physically removing the caterpillars from the plants. After a few days of this, we had no luck fully controlling them, and even had more holes appearing! So, onto the next form of IPM, or Integrated Pest Management.
For this next step, we used Yates Success Ultra, a naturally derived insecticide containing Spinetoram.
Spinetoram
Spinetoram is an insecticide derived from fermentation products of the soil bacterium *Saccharopolyspora spinosa*. It is used to target pests such as caterpillars, thrips, and other chewing or sucking insects, depending on the product label and registered use.
It works through contact and ingestion, targeting the insect’s nervous system and causing it to stop feeding and die. This makes it useful for controlling caterpillars that are actively chewing through leafy crops like bok choy and wong bok.
This product is applied as a foliar spray and has good leaf absorption, which helps it remain effective after application. It is also rainfast once dried, making it a useful option if you have an irrigation system or are growing in an area with regular rainfall.
But do be careful! There’s some key information that you should take into consideration before choosing to use a Spinetoram-based product.
Firstly, this product is toxic to bees. If you are using it, avoid spraying when bees are active, avoid spraying flowering plants, and apply very early in the morning or late in the evening when bees are not actively foraging.
Secondly, this product is also toxic to aquatic life, including fish and amphibians. Whether you are near a pond, creek, river, lake, drain, or waterway, it’s important to avoid spray drift and runoff entering these areas.
On top of this, it can also be a mild irritant to humans, so it’s recommended to use appropriate PPE when handling and spraying, such as gloves and eye protection. Always follow the product label.
We sprayed our bok choy and wong bok thoroughly, and even extended it to the large Vegepod, which holds our broccoli and cauliflower, for good measure. We waited a full week and came back to reassess our situation, and our new growth was nibble-free!
Update
So, how are they going now?
Well, over Agfest weekend, we experienced a cold snap, followed by some lovely warmer weather afterwards. Sadly, this change in weather caused our green bok choy to bolt!
Only the green variety bolted though. The purple cultivar has stayed strong and hasn’t bolted. So that brings us to the question: why did this happen, and what do we do now? Let’s start with the “why”.
Bolting
Bolting is when your plant hurries to seed prematurely, often leaving the harvest bitter and less enjoyable to eat.
Bolting can occur when the plant becomes stressed due to a range of factors, including cold stress, frost, sudden temperature changes, longer daylight hours, and inconsistent watering. Some varieties of brassicas are also more susceptible to bolting than others, which gives some crops a bit more wiggle room with weather changes and growing conditions.
So why did our bok choy bolt?
Our bok choy most likely bolted due to the temperature changes, which tricked the plant into thinking it was time to enter its reproductive stage. Because the other plants in the same Vegepod didn’t bolt, we can assume it was less likely to be caused by watering issues or light exposure alone, as they are all planted in the same area.
So, we can only assume that our purple bok choy and wong bok are more tolerant to the temperature changes than the green bok choy that decided to bolt.
But let’s talk about what we can do about it.
The short version is: sadly, you can’t truly reverse bolting once it starts. Once a plant begins to bolt and move into its flowering stage, its hormones change, and this affects how the crop grows and tastes.
You can sometimes harvest immediately if the crop is still usable, but once the flavour has turned bitter, it usually won’t be as enjoyable to eat. In our case, the crop won’t be ideal for eating unless you don’t mind that stronger, bitter flavour!
So, what should we do?
There are a few options. You can remove the plant and use it for compost or a worm farm, or you can allow it to fully flower and collect the seeds for next season.
This is the option we’ve decided to go with for our bok choy. Our other plants in this Vegepod should last a little longer, but we’ll be keeping an eye on them and watching to see when the seeds are ready to collect and reuse.
We may also demonstrate how nutrients can be adjusted when plants move into flowering or seed production, but for leafy brassicas like bok choy and wong bok, flowering isn’t usually the goal unless you are intentionally letting the plant go to seed.
So here we are now!
It’s only been a few weeks, and our medium Vegepod is looking so full compared to when we first started. All of us here at Hydro Oasis are so excited to see how big these specimen pieces get and to show you all what you can do with a high-quality growing medium, consistent care, and a controlled nutrient program.
