Mini Sweetcorn advice needed!

[claire1342]

I'm growing mini pop for the 1st time this year, they are about 7 foot high and have finally started producing little cobs. Everywhere says to pick them when the silky threads start showing at the end of the cobs, but when i do there is nothing inside just lots of tassles! Is there something wrong with them? Also how do you pick them, just pull them off or cut them?

Thanks

[Scottishnewbie]

grew these for the first time this year and won't be doing it again - lots of hassle for next to nothing!

I picked mine at various stages - some with no tassels, some with white ones and some with reddish brown ones - there are lots and lots of those silky threads inside but if you just pull them downwards they come off easily enough and then you can either just eat raw or else steam. If you miss the right point to cut them off (and I dont think i ever found it!), they are big and horrible

hope this helps

[rustylady]

I will never grow Minipop again. Absolutely useless. Not worth the space they take up. Sticking to standard sweetcorn from now on.

[Twinsane]

minipop failure here too. All tassles no pop!

[Rabidbun]

Mine are still only a foot high, don't know what is wrong with the dratted things. Spose they do live up to their name though...

[SarzWix]

We've grown them for 3 years now, my daughter loves them so she has them in her patch We usually pick them when the silks are just long enough to start drooping and you get a reasonable sized mini-cob. We usually get 3 or 4 to a plant.
They're probably not worth doing unless you have room for both types, but they're worth it to us because they get eaten with no moaning

[claire1342]

Thanks for all your replies, Good news today I looked deeper into the plant to find lovely little cobs! I think that some of them might have been left too long but hey, we will see tonight when we eat them!

I see what you mean about a lot of space for little produce!

[NOG]

You would have to plant half a plot to make it worth while.

[Lizzie]

Ive planted them too this year. Very slow.

[Twinsane]

After my previous response to this post saying that my corn crop was also failing, I thought I'd post an update. Although slow to start, the corn has lately been going great and is now ready (or over ripe in some cases) for picking. Some plants have 3 or 4 cobs on. I've posted pics below. The variety is Mr Fothergills Minipop F1.

I'm not overly keen on the flavour but maybe we've left them a little too long. I don't think we'll bother with these next year. I love sweetcorn and I could have used the space for normal size sweetcorn. Then again, my other sweetcorn plants really aren't doing anything - they either died or are still only 18" tall. Maybe squashing those surplus tomato plants in between them was a mistake...

Minipop:




Failed Sweetcorn with tomatoes (ignore the weeds!)

[Capsid]

On seeing this thread. I decided to pick a cob of my mini sweetcorn (baby corn from T&M). The plants are over 8' tall with 3-4 cobs on each with lovely red tassles. Anyway the cobs themselves look great and I'll be stir frying them tonight. So I'm not sure about the taste.

Here's a picture I took, the mini sweetcorn is the smaller cob with Conqueror F1 hybrid above it and picked a little too early. The runner beans and chillis have cropped very well this year too.