Saturday, February 5, 2011

Corn baby corn!

I have to be honest here the reason why I planted this corn is because I wanted to grow a baby corn. My daughter Safiyyah loves baby corn so much and I thought why not grow something for her too. Being so ignorant about corn before I thought baby corn is one type of corn. Especially when you see this label here with the picture of a baby corn. You would be convinced that this the baby corn plant.


Anyway, after few month growing it I got a little curious about the baby corn because I wanted to find out how to harvest it. So after few readings I realized that baby corn is just the young corn of any type of corn. It is harvested early before it form into the true form of corn. For a matured corn, it is ready to be harvest when the silks of the corn turn brown. So yesterday before the great rain in Melbourne I harvested one matured corn and one baby corn. I just wanted to see how does both tasted like. 


Since my daughter like baby corn so I asked her to peel the baby corn while I peeled the matured baby sweet. I had to teach my daughter if you want to eat you have to work for it. Nothing comes for free ;). Just kidding, though that is the reality of life but just wanted her to have fun in the garden. Else she will not appreciate the beauty of home gardening. That is what my mom thought me.







After few serious peeling she finally manage to get the baby cob. While I did peel the matured one and to my surprised it looks almost similar to the baby corn but bigger. I'm going to save this seed for sure. Surely I am going to plant another batch of corn tree but maybe this time would be a sweet corn. I will leave some to mature and some will be harvest as a baby corn. Hopefully I have enough time to grow another batch of corn before the autumn start. 


7 comments:

  1. I have never grown baby sweet variety before. So it is kind of interesting to see how it looks like. Interesting the kernal does not look yellowish? My son like to eat sweetcorn fresh straight from the plant without cooking it.

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  2. Do you think I still have time to plant sweetcorn at this time around?. By the way my corn flower has sprouting already. I'm really excited about it.

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  3. I agree with MKG, I have never ever heard of baby sweet maize. Where do you live actually?
    This post makes me rather impatient to wait for my maize crops! Hehehe.

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  4. I'm actually living in Melbourne right now. Studying here. I did a lot of gardening back home but gardening here is a whole different think because of the climate. It is really challenging but fun! Don't worry it will be worth the wait for your maize. ;)

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  5. I am not sure about Melbourne weather but you can try a variety which will produce earlier. I am planing to sow some sweetcorn as well but end of this month because Adelaide usually have very extreme hot weather during summer.

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  6. I am just curious when I look at your mature sweetcorn, when you push a finger in the kernel is it milky or watery? Becuase usually when they are ready the kernels are yellow but this look whitish and I have never grown this variety before.

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  7. The kernel is kinda milky but it is really similar to a baby corn. Based on the label picture it should be like a baby corn. By the way I bought this at Bunnings. Anyway, I'm keeping one corn to grow old so that I can keep the seed.

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