Beet, how do you grow them?

[archeryrob]

I preface this, I have flat out quit tilling. I have a fenced in garden with 1 1/2" - 2" of hardwood chipped mulch on it. I hate weeding. Cucumbers, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon and pepper are doing fine. Even beans were coming up but the young rabbits can fit through 2x4 fence and are demolishing the beans. I have to add chicken wire now on the garden.

Now I tried several ways to grow beets from seed in the mulch. I tried raking a V in the mulch and just starting them in the dirt. I think the mulch slides back in and is a bit heavy for the beets to push up. I got very poor results. I planted a later batch in a hand dug spot where I removed my moved rhubarb and they are going like crazy, except now the rabbit found he likes beet tops. The wife said I can't kill them yet, but he better run come November or he's table fare.

Anyone else planting in mulch? I am considering getting seed trays for the beets and growing them 3 weeks or so and them tansplating them in the mulch V's I make. I had the same problems growing indeterminate tomatoes from seed, but transplants take right off in the mulch.

 

[Kusanar]

I have never tried to grow beets and certainly not in mulch, but if you want to transplant, I would do peat plugs or something similar that you can plant the entire thing in the ground rather than having to disturb the roots to plant them.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I grow beets from direct seeding but no mulch, just seed, water, grow. Might need to clear mulch out of planting area if you want to seed directly, or transplant them in - though I've never done beets as a transplant so not sure if the mulch would have any effect.

 

[nao57]

OK, there's a process to how you grow beets.

But the good news is that there's more resources than you think. You can find videos about them on the net. So you can find youtube videos. And part of the good news is that the approach for carrots is very similar to the approach for beets. So that means more resources available because there is a lot of videos and interest in carrots.

Lots of carrot videos!

Also many types of beets!

And why this is good?

The approach for say detroit red beets, and other types of beets, and for sugar beets, etc can all be used together because they are so similar not only carrots.

There is a con in this however....

Beets are biennials like carrots. (And I think swiss chard might also be similar to biennials actually.) With biennials you won't usually get seeds first year from growing them. And this is A MUST to know ahead of time! (What if you can't replace your seeds from the store one year? Or what if you need to do your own seed because of price hikes or instability?) There is good news; beets and carrots can make a lot of seeds from one plant. So you can basically at the end of the season leave 2 or 3 in the ground to grow into seed next year.

(Beet seeds also will be indistinguishable from swiss chard seeds, and other types of beet seeds. So keep them labeled and separate. Also seeds need to breathe in storing.)

The process for beets as well as carrots, you have to thin them after they turn into small sproutlings at a certain point. This you should be aware of. And beets also growing too close together can merge into the same plant. This means if you don't thin them you can lose plants.

Another problem with beets that we have out west (very dry and arid here), is that after they sprout if you don't hill up more dirt around them too much of the top of the plant will be sticking out and they won't grow right. This is why people thin them also. (But I don't know if this is a Utah think because of how dry and arid it is here. Harder to grow anything here.)

A big plus about beets also is that they will grow fast. their growing days is around 60 on the ratings (haha, this is more for us in bad climates). This makes them a good crop to start in and learn how to do. Plus root vegetables have natural advantages for survival in heat and late starts because of being root vegetables. You can also start these in early spring when its still warming up. (As well as potatoes, swiss chard, etc.) (Another advantage!)

Beet leaves are unfortunately well liked by many kinds of pests. This is a disadvantage to them. But its something you could fix with a bug netting fix.

They grow well! Wonderful and fun plant. Also they are good for storing in jars as pickled beets if you aren't a master of mason jar canning. And many people also will use beets to pickle their eggs in together. (Another advantage.)

To me it seems that one of the big advantages of gardening that you have to harness is also figuring out how to store it right so you don't lose your gains. Also its becoming necessary to not eat up 100% of your crop when you don't know what's going on with the economy. I'd plan on storing some, and leaving a few in the ground to turn into seed next year (for biennials.)

These also can grow in small spaces, because they are small. But like carrots it can be challenging figuring out how to grow enough of them to feed a family. But you can offset the damage by crop rotations with a nitration fixing plant (beans, clover, etc). And the fact that they have 2 months (seems like 3 actually) to grow means you could possibly do multiple crops of them in the same year, one after another if you had a fix for nutrient depletion of the soil and a fertilization method.

The beet leaves are good for things also. People feed them to other animals, but also use them for salads.

This plant is a must to learn how to do. So many uses. And very diverse. Red beets are one way to use. But sugar beets also very good as one of the only sugar production plants that works in climates and zones that aren't sub-tropical for sugar cane etc, as an alternative. (This is why sugar beets were such a big deal way back in the day; because you can't grow sugar bearing plants well outside of places like Hawaii, Florida, CA, etc.)

There's some great info on these with some of the southern gardeners on Youtube that go into detail on some of the care of the soil and so on.

One big thing about them; with root vegetables you need to till and loosen up the soil before you start so the soil doesn't get too hard to even start with. If you have clay soil the danger is if the clay hardens it will make it hard for the beets to expand. But if you fix that and keep it going then you can grow beets in clay soil, etc. (We have clay soil. And historically Utah, and Idaho grew sugar beets and other types of beets.) If you don't keep the soil a bit loose, then what happens with root vegetables is they'll try to expand up instead of down and outwards, which can mean problems and more pest troubles. (Ants will find them also if they expand up.)

You are right to think about beets. Once you figure out how to work them they can be low maintenance, after you figure out the mind game aspects of what to do and when.)

(Small animals like poultry may like beet tops though. Watch out.)

 

[nao57]

So looking back it seems you are worried about soil.

Beets like damp soil, but it has to be able to drain and not have the water stand still and get murky. They don't like really compact hard soil.

They are fairly diverse however. They will grow in more than one type of soil, but just take longer for some types of soil to grow. I think a mulch would do well and be OK.

As a general advise for not just this plant but others, I don't trust the 'days required to grow' much on any seed packets. So if you are growing this to help with groceries (which is wise), then I would count on everything taking longer than it says.

You can also think like, how many plants do I need per person?

However many you think you need I increase it by say +20% from seeds not germinating, and then an increase also planning ahead for some plants to fail when I thin them, and again for however many I typically lost the year before from bugs.

When you go to store them, if you leave them in the ground and come back next spring they will still be there and still be viable and grow up again. (This is neat.)

But radishes will get woody and hard if you leave them too long in the ground, but beets you can just boil down.

(I can't remember if beets will get too hard or not? Part of this is because I've only done them for about 2 years. And I always made them into pickles or canning them, so I don't know if it would have mattered if they'd gotten woody from being in too long or not?)

Another thing you can try is seeding them in seed trays and then transferring them out to the garden after going through 'seedling hardening' stages. (This is very tedious with beets though because you need a lot of them to feed someone. :S )

 

[333113]

I learned to grow beets from Charles Dowding's video:

What made the biggest difference for me was the early start and the row covers. I think the birds were eating most of my seedlings before I started using row covers.

 

[nao57]

I learned to grow beets from Charles Dowding's video:

What made the biggest difference for me was the early start and the row covers. I think the birds were eating most of my seedlings before I started using row covers.

I need to try row covers. I had been avoiding it and its a mistake.

Will the row covers and insect netting prevent wasps from eating them and other plants? Curious to hear your observations about this? And is there a particular type of row cover / insect netting you reccomend? (Hopefully something inexpensive.) And how do you not have to worry about the bug netting getting blown away in the wind?

Out here I get more wasps than other types of bugs.

And I'd been meaning to do something about it. But I get busy and there's so much to do.

 

[Birdsong 82]

Maybe I've been lucky I've just treated the area with my beets like the rest of garden I just loosen the soil deeper for root veggies. I've never tried in plain mulch but it may be that not deep enough or that
As far as the bunny I feel you. One (baby) hides in my garden under the zucchini leaves at night and it's bothered nothing other than my beets. No beet leaves for me.

 

[Birdsong 82]

Some of my root veggies grow in several raised beds that are added inside the garden to reduce digging deeper and it's worked wonderfully too

 

[nao57]

Maybe I've been lucky I've just treated the area with my beets like the rest of garden I just loosen the soil deeper for root veggies. I've never tried in plain mulch but it may be that not deep enough or that
As far as the bunny I feel you. One (baby) hides in my garden under the zucchini leaves at night and it's bothered nothing other than my beets. No beet leaves for me.

As long as the mulch can drain you should be OK.

But with a lot of water and wet mulch the risks of snails and wet type grubs increases. (Don't let that stop you, but it means other issues will come up also.)