Tokyo Bekana cabbage looks like lettuce

Tokyo Bekana (Brassica rapa) is an interesting leaf vegetable that deserves to be grown more commonly.  It's a highly nutritious cabbage, but it looks like a lettuce.  If you have never tried this, you should grow it and see if it makes its way into your yearly vegetable garden growing rotation.  

I have only been growing Tokyo Bekana for a year or two, and am very impressed with this almost obscure vegetable.  

I think there are a few different varieties of Tokyo bekana around.  The one I grow looks slightly different to the varieties they grow overseas.  Mine looks far more like lettuce, which is what I prefer. 

Tokyo bekana leaves 

I find how uncommon this vegetable is to be really baffling.  This quick and easy to grow vegetable is basically unheard of in Australia, yet it is super simple to grow, tastes good, is very nutritious, and seed is often available from many seed companies.  While you may have more luck in other areas, I have never seen Tokyo bekana for sale in fresh food markets.  

Like many vegetables, it has a few different common names.  I have seen it called 'vitamin green' due to its high vitamin content.  I have seen it called 'space cabbage' as it has successfully been grown in the space station as a trial vegetable (it had issues with high levels of CO2).  Tokyo bekana seems to be the most commonly used name for this vegetable, so that is what I call it.  

Tokyo Bekana

Toykyo Bekana is an Asian cabbage (Brassica rapa).  I like many of the Asian cabbages, and Tokyo Bekana is one of my faviourites.  It looks like lettuce but is far more nutritious, it never goes bitter, and it grows incredibly fast.  

I have read that Chinese cabbages were first introduced to Japan in the very early 1900's by soldiers returning home after the Russo-Japanese war.  These cabbages were selected for desirable characteristics, and crossed, and selected some more, until Tokyo bekana was developed and stabilised.  I am told it is still widely grown in and around Tokyo.  

Self-seeded plant

This year I didn't get around to planting seeds of many winter greens.  What you see in these photos are mostly the results of things I let drop seed over summer, and have popped up by themselves.  I did deliberately plant some seed, but not enough.  

I am glad that Tokyo bekana self seeded.  I have been picking them for many weeks and I expect to be able to keep harvesting until it is time to dig them in and plant my summer vegetables.

Self seeded winter vegetables

I dislike many of the European cabbages (Brassica oleracea).  I like some more than others.  While there are exceptions, I usually find their taste and smell to be displeasing.  I find them simple yet slow to grow, and their fresh leaves seem to irritate my eyes.  

Perhaps I am imagining that part about them irritating my eyes, or maybe it is a real thing, I don't know for sure.  It seems as though every time I handle cabbages my eyes are irritated.  The leaves have a bloom of fine powder that I think is irritating my eyes, then again perhaps this is a placebo effect and I am imagining it.  

There are a lot of different types of European cabbages, but that is a long and (incredibly interesting) story for another time.

Tokyo bekana is an Asian cabbage.  Asian cabbages (Brassica rapa, and a few other species) are a different species, and I tend to like them a lot more.  There are a few Asian cabbages that I dislike, and there are many types that I do like.  I usually find their taste more agreeable, many grow almost unbelievably fast, and they don't seem to irritate my eyes (although this last point may be imagined).  

There are also vast numbers of different types of Asian cabbages.  The story of Asian cabbages is incredibly interesting - that's right Jarvis, or Jeremy, or Travis, or whatever your name is, the cabbage story is super interesting!   

To me the Tokyo bekana plants looks a lot like lettuce.  They are an attractive bright green, the leaves are slightly crinkled, and they have a soft crunchy white mid rib.  

All parts are tender and edible.  They are picked and eaten at any stage from micro greens, to baby leaf, all the way to impressively large plants.  The leaves never get tough or fibrous, and they don't get bitter or spicy.  

It looks so much like lettuce

You can eat it raw like lettuce (yes, I know you can cook lettuce) and it goes well in things like garden salads and Caesar salad.  When raw it makes a decent lettuce substitute, tastes vaguely similar, yet is far more nutritious and easier for me to grow.  

You can stir fry it or use it in any way you would use Bok Choy.  It tastes different to bok choy, but still very good.  When stir fried it tastes nice, it goes well with pretty much everything, and when cooked it reduces in size considerably.  It goes reasonably well in shchi (Щи) but lacks volume once cooked.  While I haven't tried this I'm told it can also be fermented and made into sauerkraut or kimchi and things like that.  

Tokyo bekana lasts a few days in the fridge so is probably best harvested as needed, one leaf at a time.  You can cut the entire plant to harvest, but you get a far larger crop over a longer time period by just taking leaves as needed.  Picking as needed eliminates any worry with storage.  

I didn't thin them, and they are very productive

Tokyo bekana grows very fast.  Last year I recorded the number of days from planting seed until harvest, it took just over a month from planting the seed until harvesting baby leaf, and a little under two months until I was harvesting large plants.  Most 'days to harvest' are recorded from transplanting seedlings of undefined age, I recorded days from planting the seeds until harvest as that is far more useful for me to know.  

For me they grew through winter with no significant issues.  It copes well with frosts and cold weather.  

Once the weather heated up they went to seed.  I allowed it to drop some seed in the garden, where it did not grow over summer.  Once the weather cooled the volunteer seedlings started to pop up.  

Bok choy and Tokyo bekana from same age plants

I think Tokyo bekana can grow well over summer if given enough water, when allowed to self seed it waited for autumn to germinate.  

I am told that this is a biennial, and under the right conditions it possibly is, for me it grows as an annual.  For me, most of the Asian cabbages are annuals, and most of the European cabbages are biennials.  I prefer annuals to biennials as seed saving is easier/faster when dealing with annuals. 

As Tokyo bekana is the same species as bok choy (and a lot of other Asian cabbages) they can and do cross readily, so care needs to be taken with seed saving.  

I did a control cross of Tokyo bekana and bok choy out of curiosity.  The cross was far larger than the bok choy parent.  I might save that topic for another blog post rather than making this one too long.  

Bok choy on left, cross in middle, Tokyo bekana on right

Tokyo bekana looks like lettuce

When Tokyo bekana experienced a lot of frosts (down to about -8C) I found some of the outer leaves got a little damage.  It got small discoloured circles on some outer leaves, these were not a big problem.  They could be ignored and just eaten, or I could cut out those parts, or the leaf could just be fed to the chickens and I could pick the next leaf as it was protected and showed no signs of trouble.  

Being a brassica, they are eaten by caterpillars of cabbage white butterflies.  This plant does not seem to be their favourite host and I rarely found any caterpillars or much damage on the leaves.  I never spray with anything, so cabbage white butterflies can sometimes be an issue here.  Given how little damage was done to Tokyo bekana, the cabbage white butterflies were not a big problem an nothing to really worry about in my garden.  They may prove to be a bigger issue in other gardens, or when this plant is grown over summer.  

My plants have not had any issues from slugs and snails, but they look like they type of plants that snails would love.  This is probably worth keeping an eye on as they look like the kind of plant that snails would enjoy.

  

More Tokyo benaka

Our chickens love to eat Tokyo bekana, so any leaves that are damaged are fed to chickens who convert them into eggs.  Being high in vitamins, Tokyo bekana is good to use to supplement the chicken feed.  I can't imagine it is high enough in energy, so I wouldn't try to replace a high percentage of their feed with it. 

I don't tend to feed much of any brassica to our guinea pigs, the few small leaves I have given them were quickly eaten.  I dare say that many other leaf eating animals would enjoy eating these too.

These leaves are tender even when they grow very large.  I mostly feed excess vegetables to the chickens, but sometimes add a leaf to the compost where it disappears quickly, or put a leaf in the worm farm where it is eaten fast, or dig in to the soil as green manure before planting the next crop.  I image these leaves consist of a large percentage of water, and they contain a lot of minerals, so it stands to reason that they would break down fast.  

I think there are a few varieties of Tokyo bekana, the one I have is not named but grows true to type and performs very well.  I don't have any seed for sale at the moment, but may isolate and save seed from my best plants later in the season.  If I have spare seed I will try to list it on my for sale page.  

Seed for Tokyo bekana is readily available through many online seed sellers, so if I do not have any listed for sale it is worth tracking down somewhere else.  I wouldn't bother buying seedlings of you see them for sale as these grow very fast, and a packet of seed is generally cheaper and it gives you a lot more plants than a punnet of seedlings.