garlic and chillies help spice up a stir fry and are easy to grow at home.

Oriental vegetables are at the heart of a good stir fry and are quite easy to grow from seed. Here we look at Pak Choi, Japanese Onions, and Lemon Grass but peppers are also easy to grow in a cold greenhouse.

Pak Choi can be grown as a baby leaf or left to mature into thick, succulent stems of white and green. These quick maturing Oriental vegetables are rich in Vitamins A and C and also contain calcium and iron. They also can be ornamental in a garden.
Three unique hybrid Pak Choys or Chinese cabbage for salads or stir fries come from Thompson Morgan.

1. Purple – An eye catching reddish-purple top leaf contrasts with the green undersides and the bright green stems. Purple F 1 ‘s  purplish colour is enhanced by cooler autumn weather. Also found as purple Choy Sum.
2. Green – Produces vibrant apple green stems. Ready to harvest in 30 days from sowing as baby leaf or 45-70 days as semi-mature to full size heads. Earlier and later sowings can be made under cloches or fleece to produce a supply of baby leaves.
3. White – Produces pure white, juicy stems. Also ready in just over a month and flowers leaves and stalks can all be eaten.

Japanese Onion Shimonita is a novel Japanese salad onion with extremely thick tubular foliage. Plants given a wider spacing can achieve huge stems similar to leeks. The flavour is unusually sweet lower in the stems and more pungent towards the leaves. The plants are winter hardy.

Lemon grass Cymbopogon citrates is harder to grow as a half-hardy perennial needing a minimum temperature of 50F. The wonderful lemon-scented grass is a real delicacy that is essential in oriental dishes and an excellent addition to soups, curries, sauces and fish dishes. Germination can be slow but it grows surprisingly tall in the right conditions up to 5 ft.

For bulk try Romaine lettuce leaves and some mushrooms – the world is your oyster!