How To Grow Beets - Misfit Gardening

See how to grow beets from seed in your garden and enjoy fresh, nutritious beets straight from your homestead garden this year!

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How To Grow Beets From Seed

Beets thrive in cooler weather and can be sown directly into the growing bed in March or April. You can get an earlier crop by sowing beet seeds indoors and transplanting under frost protection when the first true leaves appear.

Sow beets again 4 to 6 weeks before your first frost date for another harvest in fall.

What Beet Varieties To Grow?

Photo by Christina Rumpf on Unsplash

Beets come in a range of colors from deep red, orange-yellow, and white. Both the Swiss chard-like leafy tops are edible as well as the roots.

Red Beets

Bulls Blood
Dark Red Detroit
Shiraz
Red Devil (red leaf variety)
Lutz Green Leaf

Yellow Beets

Touchstone Gold
Burpee’s Golden
Golden
Yellow Indeterminate Mangel
Golden Detroit

White Beets

Albino
Avalanche

Striped Beets

Chioggia
Chioggia Guardsmark

How To Sow Beet Seeds

Sow seeds ½ inch (1 cm) deep in a good quality seed starting mix. If sowing directly in the garden bed, sow seeds ½ inch (1 cm) deep and 1 to 2 inches apart. Keep soil moist to encourage germination.

Beet plants love rich, loose, and well-drained soils in a sunny location. Work well-rotted compost into the planting bed before sowing seeds or transplanting outside.

Avoid growing beets in soil that is high in nitrogen or in the soil where manure has been worked in. Nitrogen will cause greens to flourish but no root to form.

Caring For Your Beets

Plants will require thinning out to provide more room to grow. Pinch off or snip the leaves of the smaller or more spindly seedlings level with the ground when the plants are about 2 inches (5 cm) tall. Once the beet plants are established, give them about 3-4 inches between plants to encourage bigger roots to form. Beets can be harvested for baby leaf salad greens and the roots are ready for harvesting when they are small, golf ball-sized roots. Some varieties of beets produce bigger roots like the Yellow Indeterminate Mangel and the Lutz Green Leaf, these can be harvested as they get bigger.

Keep soil moist to keep the roots cool during hot weather and to reduce bolting or running to seed. Beets appreciate a mulch to help keep the moisture in the soil.

Common Beet Pests and Diseases

A few common pests to watch out for on your beet plants are:

Beet cyst nematode
Root-knot nematode
Darkling beetle (Rove beetle)
Leafminers

Common diseases can be kept at bay by practicing crop rotation, using mulch around the plants, and avoiding overhead watering from sprinklers. Here are some common diseases for beets:

Bacterial blight
Scab
Beet curly top disease or Beet Curly Top Virus
Cercospora leaf spot
Downy mildew
Damping Off
Beet western yellows virus
Fusarium yellows and root rot

Harvesting Beets

Tops of beets will be visible able the soil and can be harvested from small, golf ball-sized roots to larger roots the size of a tennis ball. Smaller roots are the most tender and flavorful. Pull the roots up from the soil by hand or use a garden fork to loosen the soil next to the beets. Take care not to accidentally stab the beets with the garden fork!

To harvest beets by hand, firmly grasp the area where the leaves meet the root and give a firm and steady pull until the beet comes out of the ground.

Beet greens can be harvested for baby leaf salads when they are small or used as braising greens when they are bigger.

Storing

Freezing

Wash young beets and trim leaves off the root leaving ½ inch (1 cm) stem and taproot. Cook in boiling water until tender. Small beets 25 – 30 minutes, large beets 45 – 50 minutes. Cool quickly in cold water then peel and remove the stem and taproot. Cut into slices or cubes. Place into a suitable container, seal, and freeze.

Canning

Beets are a low acid food. Pickled beets may be water bath canned otherwise, beets must be pressure canned.

Related post Safe Canning Basics

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