Baby Vegetables

[digitS']

Of course, there are fingerling potatoes and gardeners can also crowd potatoes so that the tubers are of small size at maturity. I apparently did that with Daisy Gold last year. Described as a "lunker" in the catalogs, I gave them as much room as the other plants. The giant plants grew beside those that had big potatoes. Daisy Gold had plenty/plenty ... nearly all about golf ball size.

Some carrot varieties, or many other veggies, are small. That small size often comes with quick growth allowing for a tender veggie and early harvest.

Steve

 

[baymule]

Baby potatoes used to be rejects..... now with a catchy name, they can charge more for them. Just shows how dumb people really are..... Same with baby carrots, rejects ground down to a more pleasing shape and treated with chemicals so they don't turn brown. Baby spinach greens or other baby greens are just the immature leaves, hence the catchy baby name.

 

[Carol Dee]

I love me some New Potatoes and Peas. Usually when the peas are ready we sacrifice a hill (or 2) of potatoes to enjoy the babies,. Delicious with butter and parsley. (Boil whole with skins on.)

 

[Smart Red]

I love me some New Potatoes and Peas. Usually when the peas are ready we sacrifice a hill (or 2) of potatoes to enjoy the babies,. Delicious with butter and parsley. (Boil whole with skins on.)

Yum! That's one of the best reasons for having a garden. That's a must have meal here, too.

 

[Nyboy]

These had their skins on and where very good. Someone asked what about baby corn?

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

These had their skins on and where very good. Someone asked what about baby corn?

Originally (a very long time ago in China) corn was cut super small out of necessity, there was a large population to be fed. Eventually the Chinese royalty developed a taste for the "baby" corn. Overtime, this led to varieties that tasted even better when cut small and/or varieties that stayed small. In this case it would be a little bit of both.

 

[digitS']

Baby corn is yummy. A word that I use only now & then . Yummy!

I've wondered about baby corn. Wikipedia says that special varieties are not always used and that the second ear on the stalk is suitable.

Their link to one WSU pamphlet tells us that all canned baby corn in the US is imported. Booo! We should be able to do better than that.

I also wonder it the first ear would also be suitable. The second should develop better if the first is harvested. Those of us with sweet corn are probably just a little overwhelmed with mature ears over the course of a few weeks. Having some baby corn with our summer stir-fries may extend the corn harvest while limiting it in just a very small way.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I'll cover this one.

Technically, you don't need a special corn to make baby corn. Any corn will work provided you pick the ears really young (as soon as the silk shows up) so yes you can use the second and so on ears of a standard corn.

However since a lot of modern corns aren't really designed to make a lot of ears (especially if you want the first ear to stay nice and big so you can still sell it) and growing a whole field of corn to just get 1-2 baby ears per plant is not necessarily cost effective, especially when you consider the big baby corn market is China (where you face the twin consumer expectations of veggies that are perfectly fresh and comparatively cheap.) there ARE corns bred just for baby. Most of these are probably like Chires Baby; corns with genes to make tons of tiny cobs on a lot of tillers (as opposed to a few big ones on one to a few.)

While I don't know for certain, I imagine those may also may give a bit longer harvest window. Since the ears never grow beyond baby size anyway I imagine they are still harvestable and salable as long as the ear is soft.

There seems to be no rule what kind of corn is best for baby. Chire's is technically a bright red popcorn when it grows up (though because of the tiny kernel size, the popped kernels look like the bits that break off of "normal" popcorn) Many of the Asian ones are field flints or dents.

 

[Smart Red]

Thank you @Pulsegleaner! That is why I love this site. Learning something new every day here!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

My pleasure.

Incidentally of you really DID want to start with a sweet corn, you might want to look into Tom Thumb (the sweetcorn one, not the popcorn). I've never actually seen it myself, but supposedly it has the same "dozens of tiny cobs" trait Chire's does.