Grow Baby Corn

Mini-veggies can be cute, tasty, easy to grow

Many gardeners aspire to grow a humongous pumpkin or head of cabbage. And many of the same people are also attracted to miniature vegetables -- witness all those bags of "mini" carrots lined up on market shelves.

Those carrots are just one of many miniature vegetables you can easily grow yourself.

Cuteness must be one of the appeals of miniature vegetables. Just picture pearl onions swimming in a steaming bowl of peas, a plate of buttery, baby potatoes, or those glazed, lilliputian ears of corn mingling with water chestnuts and snowpeas in chow mein.

LESS OF A GREEN THUMB FOR MINIS

Miniature vegetables are usually easier to grow than full-size ones.

You don't need to plant a special variety of corn to get baby corn; just pick it this year from a patch intended for full-size ears. All you do is pick the ears just as the silks are showing.

These small ears do give you a lot less to eat, so if you want a lot of baby corn, take steps next year to grow it more efficiently: Grow any multi-eared variety of sweet corn; plant close, giving each plant about a square foot of space; and plan to grow something else after harvest, because baby corn matures a few weeks earlier than sweet corn.

Besides cuteness, baby corn does have good texture, a trait shared by some other baby vegetables. Baby zucchinis, for example, are much more tender and succulent than their grown-up counterparts.

For some eye appeal, harvest baby zucchinis while their flowers are still attached.

Baby potatoes have skins so tender as to be almost nonexistent. But take note: Baby potatoes have tender skins only if they are truly babies, rather than mature but small potatoes.

Yes, a number of miniature vegetables are not baby vegetables, but vegetables that never get large. Tom Thumb is a buttercrunch type of lettuce that matures to heads the size of tennis balls. Mei Qing Choi is a variety of Chinese cabbage that matures heads a manageable foot high. These varieties never get large.

Ooh Baby! – Corn, that is – « Lemmon Area Farmers Market

Don’t you love that baby corn in stir fry and salad dishes? This popular Asian cuisine is seen everywhere, mostly canned or processed. How about growing some fresh? The miniature size of baby corn makes consumers think that it grown on dwarf corn plants. Field or sweet corn varieties work great for baby corn.  Since baby corn ears are harvested before pollination and before sugar has been stored in the kernels, it is too underdeveloped to be sweet. For baby corn, monitor the growth of corn ears carefully, this takes patience and some dedication. Corn grows so quickly, in an extra day or two, the corn can grow larger than you like for baby corn, giving a tougher and larger ear stage on each plant. Start by harvesting ears where silk appears that day. Each ear may reach this stage at a different time.  Baby corn ears are best harvested when they are two to four inches long and a third of an inch to two-thirds of an inch in diameter. Refrigerate baby corn with husks on, immediately after harvest if you don’t use it right away. Gardeners can harvest baby corn and mature sweet corn ears from the same plant. You may want to harvest the lower ears for baby corn, allowing the top ear on a plant to mature for sweet corn. Starchy feed (field) corn, with a tendency to grow multiple ears, also works well for baby corn.

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