Back around Labor Day, the six-packs of Chinese cabbage with their promising bright green leaves were too hard to pass up at the garden center. Is it too late to transplant them, I wondered? Frost would be six weeks away. Was that enough time for them to grow with the dimming sunlight? But transplant I did and now, this first week of November, the loosely packed leaves are waiting to be picked. Ready to harvest in 45 to 60 days, Bok Choy (or Pak Choi) has mild, celerylike leaves that are tasty in salads or in a stir fry. Because it's so cold-tolerant, planting (from transplants) in mid-August or early September for a fall harvest, produces better heads of leaves than those grown in spring.

—Nina Koziol