BABY veg have long been a favourite at the dinner table, but you can pay a lot for the pre-packed mini-carrots, courgettes and leeks in the 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 any 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 ones by the beginning of August and found the best variety was Electra, which produced a whopping 123 plants per square metre 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 square metre, weighing 4.1kg.

Baby carrots are simply those which are 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 of these into the ground in rows spaced 15cm apart and thinned the seedlings to around 1cm-1.5cm(¼-½ inch) 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 on in the season.

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 attacking the roots.

With courgettes, the best baby veg variety was Supremo, but you have to pick them frequently to stop them becoming too large.

Simply harvest them smaller than normal, planting one plant per metre.

If you want only one or two courgette plants, buy them from a garden centre. 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 (3-4in).

The least successful baby veg was undoubtedly sweetcorn, as each plant produced only a couple of cobs. Grow the bigger varieties, which will give you heavier cobs and will be a much better use of space.

Cauliflowers, however, fared better – those recommended for growing as baby veg are perfect for families who simply 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.