Beets take a little longer (60 days on average) than radishes and a little more space than the quick European radishes. They need to be two to three inches apart. If you like beet greens, than Tall Top Early Wonder is a good choice. Short top beets, Early Blood Turnip, Crosbys Egyptian, Merin, Chicago Red etc are good choices.
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Beets are a wonderful vegetable and are no more difficult to grow than any other vegetable. Farmerdilla's beautiful photo should be enough to convince you to grow them.

I would emphasize two points. Be sure to thin them so they aren't crowded. (But, as a good radish grower, you must already know that.) Make use of the delicious greens. IMO, they are superior to spinach.

Definitely grow beets!

Jim

Clumsy, I hope you don't mind if I horn in on your thread to ask a related question.

I've grown beets before (hoping to better next year!) but have never eaten the greens. This coming year I'd like to try them.

My question is, if you harvest the greens, does it affect the beet? How many times can you harvest the greens from each beet and still get a good beet?

I know someone who harvests the greens regularly, but she doesn't eat the beet itself so I'm not sure what the effect is.

Thanks!
:)
Dee

When the beets are small, you can cook the thinnings for cooked greens or the really baby ones for salad. If they have little, marble sized beet root on them, so much the better. Leave them attached to the greens and cook the whole thing. Yummy!

Otherwise, just grow some of your beets for greens and others for roots. I don't try to get greens and roots from the same plant.

Jim

You can harvest the like Turnip greens, just taking a few of the larger leaves from each plant, without adversely affecting root growth. The tall top types of course are better for this. Most folks just save the greens when harvesting the beets. The tall top types have plenty of greens, some of the others are a bit sparse. As Jim sid they taste a lot like spinach, but are quite sweet. Imagine spinach with sugar on it it. This Kestral, a good table beet, but notice the meager tops.
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I showed my mom the pictures and she said, "Ooooh!! Those look good!"

Thank you for the suggestions. The idea of having the entire plant on the plate seems quite interesting!

I think those Kestral are what she liked best. I think she wants the roots. She likes the juice.

I plant Swiss Chard for greens so I'll grow for roots. Thanks so much for you help!

I harvest both the root and the leaves from the same plants. Rule of thumb is to never take more than 1/3 of the leaves in a beet plant, I usually do it from the outer most leaves, just like chard. My beet roots do not grow large as the nice pictures Farmerdilla posted, maybe this is why? In any case, I only like them pickled or marinated or seasoned grated in a salad, so small is good for me since I eat the roots raw. To me the beet leaves taste a lot like chard, I really like them a lot. I inter-plant carrots and beets on a raised deep bed we made for this purpose (our soil is too clay). We use the different color beets, golden, candy stripe and Detroit red. I got a few sprouts, can't wait until they grow, yum yum....

"To me the beet leaves taste a lot like chard..."

Good observation. Beets and chard are the same species (Beta vulgaris). One has been bred for the roots, the other for leaves and stalks.

Jim

IMHO there is nothing better than beet greens. I love spinach, chard and any other green I have ever had, but beet greens are the BEST. I like to grow Lutz or Winter Keeper or Long Season(all the same I think) and Tall Top/Early Wonder. The Lutz can get to an amazing size and still be great, and they will store for a while. You can certainly harvest some leaves from each plant and still get a usable root, but why not just plant plenty? I also grow chard(Rhubarb), and there IS a taste difference between the two, although both are great.
JMO,
Tom

tomakers makes a good point. I'm limited by space so it would be a little better that I use beets for both roots and leaves. That way I wouldn't really have to grow chard or spinach for that matter.

I don't need them to keep long. Only that I'll need a steady supply so my mom can drink her breakfast. (Vegetable juice of course. Haha). Any extra juice is frozen for later.

Early Wonder has a reasonable DTM for succession planting, since I rarely let plants get to full size. To much can go wrong. :)

How does Early do in heat? Does it get woody as soon as temps rise above 75? Our springs are schizophrenic and it'll have to take a wide range of temps.

>>IMHO there is nothing better than beet greens
Early Wonder is a good variety to try. They seemed slow to germinate.

The only thing at my site is that beets prefer a little lime. I am too a whole plant eater, though the leaves are eaten in october and the roots through the winter.

Wow! Nice-looking beets! I really am hoping to have more success this year.

Funny story. The first year I grew beets, I had no idea that each seed yielded one beet. I guess I thought they were more of a plant, that had several beets on the roots. So, I figured 20 seeds would be more than enough to keep me in beets. Imagine how silly I felt when I found out that I would only get 20 beets - and that's IF they all germinated, lol. Well, luckily for me, they did all germinate, and also luckily for me, my kids won't eat them, so my DH and I carefully rationed our 20 beets, eating two per meal, so we got 10 meals out of them, lol. Last year, my second year, I planted lots more, but didn't have good luck with them.

Third time's the charm - I hope!

:)
Dee

Let me put in a plug here for 'golden' beets - same taste, same wonderful greens, but when you cook and eat them, the kitchen and dinner plate doesn't look like somebody has been slaughtering goats.

Roasted beets are very good.

Here is a link that might be useful: one of many sources of Burpee's Golden beets, linked here for the picture

Dee:
My funny story is sort of reversed. I hate to thin beets and so, several years ago, began carefully (I think) planting seeds far enough apart so as to preclude the need to thin. To my surprise, I continued to get multiple plants appearing to come from the same darn hole. After examining the sprouts for several years I concluded a seed could give rise to more than one plant and I would need to thin them no matter what. Wonder if I need to examine that conclusion further?

Billy, you figured it out. Beet seeds, as we know them, are really a small clump of seeds. Each one can give rise to several plants. Seed companies don't separate them into individual seeds because it isn't worth the effort.

Jim

Actually, what we normally think of as beet seed is a husk with multiple seeds. Several companies produce mono-seeds primarily for commercial growers who can ill afford the labor costs of thinning. Examples are Solo, Solist, Modella,Modena, Moneta, Monodet, Monogram, Monopoly, Moronia ..... Since David put in a plug for "Golden"beets, There are also white beets Like Albina Ice, Blankoma,.... The off colored forms are strictly a novelty for me. There is also a Yellow Detroit,
A novely that is vigorous in the extreme, but not as tasty on my palate are the carrot shaped beets, Cylindra and Formanova.
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clumsygrdner -- my MIL lives in Central KY (in the Danville area) and each year in the spring she plants beets. She has great success with beets :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Judy's Square Foot Garden

Does anyone know about transplanting beets? I've read some links about how its easier to germinate them indoors. How do you transplant them outside later? Can you seperate the clumps into individual plants? Or do you have to thin before you transplant?

Beets have a very long taproot. They are tricky to transplant because if you break or damage that tap root, you do irreparable damage. It can be done done but not worth the effort for me. They are no more difficult to germinate in place than in a planting tray or cube. If I were considering transplants, I would get a Mono type and used planting cubes.

Here are some miniature and dwarf beet cultivars for small gardens: Baby Canning, Burpee Golden, Little Ball, Red Ace Hybrid, Ruby Queen.

What's a Mono type?

What I was thinking of was transplanting very young, within a week of germination. I've done this before with different poppies with no problems. I would imagine that if you did wait until they have their true leaves, transplanting would be hard.

The mono type is a single seed beet. You get the plant where you plant it instead of a cluster of plants as with ordinary beet seeds. I listed some cultivars in an earlier post in this thread. Johnny's offers Moneta. http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/product.aspx?category=1&subcategory=354&item=2319
For some reason this will not link today.

Very interesting. I have been transplanting beets for many years and it is very easy to do. I plant wide rows of seed and naturally some do not come up at all and there are several clumps of seed that are two thick to mature. When they are about 2 inches tall I separate them and poke a hole in the ground with my finger and drop one in. That is it.Just about as easy as you can get. Water them and you are finished.One other thing when you open the seed package and are ready to plant pour some into you hands and rub them together. This will separate some of the clump of seeds.

I've transplanted with no ill effects also. Again, this was before I knew what I was doing (if one can say that I know what I'm doing NOW, lol) but I did pretty much the same as glenn. I sowed them in containers, then when about an inch or so tall, I transplanted into the garden. All transplants (all 20 of them, lol) survived and grew.

:)
Dee

Very interesting...

I'll do this, I'll sow some indoors so long as my soil is cool and then when it warms up to around 60 degrees I'll sow direct. Because of the fickle spring temps, I typically sow indoors and transplant just to take full advantage of calmer times.

Farmerdilla, when do you sow your beet seed? I have been told I can sow them twice a year here in Mobile/zone 8b: in Feb. and Aug. I tried beets for the first time in Aug. with dismal germination. (I had TWO beets from maybe a hundred seed?) They were fresh seed and I soaked them in water prior to planting. I am going to try again in Feb., was just wondering when you sow to get such beautiful specimens. Any tips to share?

I do the spring sowing a just past the spring equinox. germination in the spring is relatively easy. Some times I will use a row cover, laid flat over the row which seems to speed them up a bit. August sowing is very tricky, sometimes the soil is extremely hot. If I can a few cloudy rainy days, I can get them up. But hot bright days, they die in the sprout. You have to shade them with row covers, or I have used grass mulch. I use a soak hose and wet the soil down each evening. Even so it is a gamble, seldom get a perfect stand and sometimes very few. Same problem with spinach.

Thanks, farmerdilla. I now have a little more hope for my spring beet crop. :) I'll try again in Aug. too providing them with some cover, understanding now that it's not me but perhaps our brutal summer weather.

BTW, I just gave up altogether on trying to get spinach to germinate in the garden and just start it inside now and transplant. I've had a very successful winter crop with it this year by doing so.

Thanks again.

Hello,
I've been reading about the difficulty of transplanting beets and it being too much trouble? Poppycock. I transplant beets every year and never have any problems with them. I've grown Chioggia, Detroit Red and Cylindra, starting indoors and then transplanting outdoors. I have a nice little organized space for them and I don't have to do any thinning. I also harvest both leaves and roots from the beets. Someone said not to take more than 1/3 of the leaves at any time and I think that is sound advice. Sautéed beet leaves are delicious! Chard is in the same family and I enjoy chard too. Young, tender leaves in salads, larger leaves stripped off the stems and slightly sautéed and steam the stems. Also, the big leaves can be used to stuff like the Polish golumki (stuffed cabbage leaves). Incredibly delicious.

Yummm, golumpki, or as my (Slovak) grandmother called them, halupki. I might try growing cabbage just to make those. I haven't really had them since I was a kid, other than the one time I made them a few years back and realized that all the old babushkas I saw really weren't 80 years old. They were only 30, but were plum worn out from making halupki the old-fashioned way!

To get back on topic, I also have transplanted beets with no problem.

:)
Dee

Love, love, love beets! They freeze well, too. I am going to try golden beets this year also, because of the slaughterhouse factor with red beets as someone else mentioned.

I also pick the beet greens when young to add to salads.

(hate turnips - the only veggie I have grown so far that I didn't like,)

I can't wait for Spring!

I think the secret to getting a good germination of beets and spinach in the fall down here in the hot zones is soil temp. I planted spinach in August and 4 plants came up. A month later I planted spinach and each seed produced two plants (or it seemed to). I planted beets in October and had beets for Christmas.

Shoot for under 75 degrees with 60-65 as optimal. I measured 55 in the garden on Friday so it's getting close here.

I have a major problem with getting the beets to get plump roots. They're all leaves, and nothing else.. What are they missing?

sidsel76 - IMHO it's necessary to thin beets to 4" between each, they don't do well if crowded. Also, consistant watering and decent soil is a must. They'll grow fast if the water is steady but not soggy. Rocks, sticks and weeds must go and of course there's the insects to consider. I've found that patience is the best fertilizer with beets since it's hard to resist picking them when the greens are lush. Hope this helps.

karen pgh you said it (they freeze good too )tell us how cause mine are always watery.

I don't know who it was that ever postulated that beets could not be successfully transplanted, but I have done it for as long as I have grown beets, some 25+ years. I never knew you could not do it. Does some book say this?

My beets always turn out lovely round orbs. All of them.

I do find that the transplants tend to suffer if I try transplanting in July when it is so blasted hot outside. If done in May and June, though, there are zero problems if you merely keep them from drying out totally.

Bonus info: I read many years ago that some Doctor in Romania was curing women of their female cancers with a mixture of cottage cheeze, fresh ground flax meal, and raw shredded beets. Anyone else read that book?

For those of you who have been successful transplanting your beets, perhaps you'd like to share your methods of doing so.

I have direct planted twice and had the birds eat each tiny sprout. I'd like to try transplanting and covering the plants so the darn birds can get them!

Elaine

This is great information on the multiple seeds. Before reading this thread I was always careful to separate my beet seeds really well, but they always clumped on me when sprouting. Now I know why and thanks for posting this information!

I went ahead and planted some beets recently. This time I tried breaking the seeds using the back of a wooden spoon. I was not sure how to do it since i did not want to risk damaging the seeds. I hope it worked. How do you guys separate the seed clusters?

I've always planted my beets, direct in the garden, and then, as a matter of custom, I dig up the little clumps of plants, break them up, and replant them with the proper spacing. The only problem I've encountered is in an extreme climate, as Oklahoma can sometimes be. Then, those little transplants may get dried out before they can get rooted and established.

I don't separate the seed clusters. I plant them and then break up the seedlings. I'd also add that a perennial temptation for me is to neglect proper thinning. It is so very important that beets not be crowded, or else they won't make a nice size root

George
Tahlequah, OK

I, too, have been thinking about trying beets this year. My original plan was to use them mainly for salads, but when one poster compared the taste to Swiss chard, I'm having second thoughts. Maybe I let the chard get too big before harvesting, but it tasted bitter to me. The kids and DH won't eat any kind of wilted/sauted green, so now I'm wondering if I grew them for the root itself, what do I do with it?

The only beet I ever tasted was pickled, and I did not like it at the time. Of course, I was quite young then, and tastes change. So what does the root part taste like raw, and what ways is it normally prepared?

Thanks Clumsy for starting this thread!

Bonnie

A well grown beet should have a slightly sweet taste.
Some varieties are very sweet.
'Lutz' is an old variety that gets very large and sweet; never 'woody'.
I've been growing these for years!
To freeze, I cook them, take the skins off and slice.
Cool in refrigerator,then bag. I've never had them turn 'watery' after thawing.

Well this was a very informative thread! Thanks all. Hope it is ok I jump in and ask, does anyone have any idea why my beets came out tiny last year? I direct sowed organic Detroit Dark Red, Medium Top seeds on August 1st for a fall crop. Most of them grew, but when I harvested them on Oct. 10th I only ended up with the 9 tiny beets you can see in the attached pic. Except for the one big one I'd say they were all under an inch. They were in a raised bed in full sun with ok soil & well watered. The radishes next to them grew perfectly. Did I just harvest them too early, or, any other idea what may have gone wrong?

Here is a link that might be useful:

I think I made a mistake throwing natural-granulated generic fertilizer around my growing beets. Many tiny knobs on all my beets as depicted. This is not a dried beet, nor it is old, it was removed from the soil. Every of the larger 7 beets are like this, with some greens and others have burned greens like this one. They started quite well from seeds until (I suspect) I used handful of fertilizer around the beets. If not fertilizer then what caused the beets to almost die and grow many tiny and well defined knobs? Too much exposure to the Sun in a climate with 15-27C (60F to 80F)? or perhaps because they were in shade in the mornings (shaded by a stone wall) and then exposed to more Sun in the afternoons and evenings.