If you’ve ever fallen in love with the bold, tangy crunch of kimchi, you’re not alone. This Korean staple has taken the culinary world by storm—and the best part? You can grow most of the ingredients at home.
Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just getting your hands dirty for the first time, growing your own kimchi garden is both rewarding and delicious. In this post, we’ll guide you through planting the essential veggies—like Chinese cabbage, daikon radish, garlic, and bunching onions —and show you how to turn your harvest into a homemade batch of kimchi that’s bursting with flavour!
Classic Kimchi
Here is everything you need to grow your very own classic Kimchi. The ingredients of Kimchi vary a lot from recipe to recipe but these are the core ingredients!
Chinese Cabbage
In a lot of videos and recipes this will be reffered to as Nappa Cabbage, this is just a UK - USA thing. Nappa Cabbage is what we would call a chinese cabbage.
Chinese cabbage is relativley straight forward to grow. It can be sown from early spring all the way through till autumn and actually enjoys the UK climate.
It is prone to bolting (early flowering) especially in hot summers. If this does happen you can simply harvest the plant early.
Chinese cabbage is a brassica like regular cabbage so will need protecting from cabbage white butterflies, your best bet is to grow it under netting.
Spring Onions
Apparently Kimchi is traditionally made with the jjokpa (쪽파) onion. I cant find the seeds for this onion in the UK anywhere, the closest I can find is a Japanese bunching onion.
A sweet and mild non-bulbing Japanese type bunching onion producing reliable crops with long white shanks with stiff blue-green tops. Excellent for salads and garnishes. Suitable for summer and autumn harvests.
We are splitting hairs here though, any bunching spring onion will work!
Garlic
Any home grown garlic will do. It is a bit late to plant garlic now, but if you are planning on doing this next year then I have a write up here.
Alternativley you can buy already growing garlic to pop in your garden from Roots Plants. Be warned though that this is much more expensive than planting bulbs for obvious reasons!
Daikon Radish
Another core ingredient in Kimchi is Daikon radish and in some recipes it is even the main ingredient. Luckily again this another Asain vegetable that thrives in the UK climate.
Daikon radish is very hardy and is a common crop to overwinter in greenhouses and polytunnels in the UK.
They can be direct sown into a prepared bed as soon as the soil is warm enough to be worked. Sown in spring they will be ready to harvest in autumn.
An excellent white Mooli F1 variety with light shoulders producing pointed roots of 25-30 cm long with good texture. Particularly tolerant to bolting allowing sowing in early spring as well as summer.
I struggle with flea beetles when growing Daikon radish so consider netting them. Seen as though both Daikon radish and chinese cabbage need netting they are great crops to grow next to each other in the same bed.
Gochu Chillis
Now this is probably a bit extra and a little too far for most people but a core ingrediant of Kimchi is gocujuang paste, and the chillis usually used for that paste are Gochu Chillis.
I have found a UK supplier but I have never used them before, find the seeds here.
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