BABY veg have long been a favourite at the dinner table, but you can pay a lot for pre-packed mini-carrots, courgettes and leeks in supermarkets, which are often pretty tasteless.
It’s worth trying to grow your own, but do you have to choose baby varieties or can you just pick the standard veg early?
Which? Gardening, the Consumers’ Association magazine, trialled a number of veg to find out whether seed ranges of baby veg were better than ordinary varieties grown close together or picked early.
The test site planted blocks of up to five varieties each of cauliflowers, courgettes, leeks, sweetcorn and carrots recommended for growing as baby veg. They also grew a standard variety at both normal and closer spacing, and picked them at the normal and smaller size for comparison.
Sowing leeks in April, they had decent baby leeks by the beginning of August and found the best variety was ‘Electra’, which produced 123 plants per sq m for a 2.6kg harvest. The standard variety ‘Carlton’, grown at closer spacing, produced 100 leeks and worked as a baby veg. When picked at a normal size it yielded 33 leeks per sq m, weighing 4.1kg.
Baby carrots are simply those harvested early, although a number of varieties including ‘Parmex’, ‘Ideal’ and ‘Mini Finger’ are often recommended for growing as mini-veg.
Researchers sowed five varieties in rows spaced 15cm apart and thinned seedlings to around 1cm-1.5cm apart. They also grew the conventional type ‘Early Nantes’ in the same way.
Harvesting began after 10 weeks and ‘Mini Finger’ proved the best baby variety, while ‘Amsterdam Force’ gave the lowest yield. However, the best results came from the standard ‘Early Nantes’ when grown in the same way as the baby veg and picked as a baby carrot.
Carrots can be difficult to establish early. The soil needs to be at least 7C degrees in the early morning and moist. Later crops should be covered with fleece to stop carrot fly.
With courgettes, the best baby variety was ‘Supremo’, but you have to pick them frequently.
If you can’t find a baby variety, just pick any variety that will produce mini-courgettes if taken regularly when they reach 8-10cm.
The least successful baby veg was sweetcorn, as each plant produced only a couple of cobs. Grow bigger varieties, which will give you heavier cobs and will be a much better use of space.
Cauliflowers fared better – those recommended for growing as baby veg are perfect for families who can’t get through a cauliflower in one meal. ‘Avalanche’ and ‘Candid Charm’ are ideal if you don’t want your cauliflowers too big. Sow them straight into the soil or start in modules and transplant carefully as they don’t like root disturbance. Water them in dry spells and give equal spacing between plants. The two smaller varieties produced more to eat than the standard ‘Sydney’.
The full report is featured in the November edition of Which? Gardening, a subscription-only magazine. For details, tel: (01992) 822800 or go to www.which.co.uk.
