Beets: Steamy Tops and Righteous Roots
by Scott Vlaun

Given that beets are extremely nutritious, gorgeously colorful, easy to grow, and all parts of the plant are useful, it's a wonder they don't get more attention in the garden. What's not to love about the lowly beet plant? They are reliable germinators, tolerant of cold and wet as well as heat (but not dry!), and generally vigorous. Beets are also one of the few plants in which both the leafy tops and bulbous roots are highly edible. They yield delicious and nutritious food from the first thinnings of greens, to baby beet roots, to steamed mature greens, to robust fist-sized roots that some call the meat of the vegetable world.

I recently met Alan Kapuler, the former research director of Seeds of Change, at the home of a mutual friend. He brought a single Lutz beet that must have weighed-in at four or five pounds. After a thorough steaming, the deep burgundy root was sliced into thick slabs that were "meatiest" thing I had eaten in many years - substantial food. It's no wonder that they've been cultivated since the rise of Rome!

Prepare a bed, feed the soil, and keep 'em moist

As mentioned above, beets are easy to grow. Start by preparing a loose, fluffy bed, and make sure that your pH is above 6, adding lime if necessary. They prefer well-drained loamy soils, but will do OK pretty much anywhere. Heavy additions of organic matter will help with clay soils and a little extra mature compost will help any soil as beets like fertile ground. Avoid excess nitrogen though, as it will favor top growth over root development. The best beets will come from plants that have grown steadily and vigorously through to maturity, so mulch to maintain consistent moisture and irrigate if necessary. Side-dress with mature compost or drench the soil with a liquid organic fertilizer after the first thinning to help sustain consistent growth.

Plant densely and harvest often

Sow the seeds about a half-inch deep and an inch or so apart. Beet "seeds" are actually fruits with little clusters of seeds that will put up multiple sprouts, so when the plants are big enough to get some tasty thinnings for the salad bowl (around three weeks old), you can clip all but the strongest plant on each cluster. As those plants begin to crowd each other, thin again to one plant every three inches or so and enjoy those greens sautéed or in salad. Once the roots get to around an inch or so in diameter, you can begin the root harvest by thinning out the tightest plants, again enjoying the tender greens. These small beets are delicious steamed whole and are the perfect size for pickling.

In most cases, to prevent them from getting fibrous, you won't want to let the beets get over three to four inches in diameter, although I've had some very tasty Yellow Mangels and Lutz beets that were closer to six inches around! You can store beets through the winter in the root cellar by removing the tops, washing off the dirt, and placing them in moist sand.

For a continuous harvest of choice roots you might want to plant a crop every three to four weeks, starting about a month before the last spring frost and continuing until about a month before the first light frosts of autumn. You should always be able to harvest a few leaves from your plants without affecting the root growth.

A beet is not a beet!

While most of us think of beets as red and round with green tops, Seeds of Change offers an interesting variety of beets including the Yellow Intermediate Mangel with its subtle sweetness and mild flavor, the Bulls Blood with its stunning deep burgundy tops and tasty roots, and the Italian heirloom Chioggia with its "candy cane" stripes and sweet, mild flavor. Of course, we offer the classic red types as well. The Detroit Red is the classic deep burgundy heirloom, while the Pronto, also deep red, is a little faster to mature and boasts better tops than most red beets except for the Lutz Salad Leaf variety: the Lutz Salad Leaf was bred especially for its succulent leaves but still makes a flavorful root. Try them all and you decide which beet is really "the beet."

Enjoy!

Beets can be prepared in many ways. Try shredding them raw on green or fruit salads. Add a beet or two to your carrots and apples when juicing. Steam, boil, or roast them with other root vegetables. One of our favorite late summer meals is a big, shallow bowl of mashed blue potatoes, surrounded by a thick ring of steamed red beet chunks, with a pile of steamed greens mounded in the center, and of course a nice dollop of butter. And then there's always borscht, a cold beet soup that can be just the thing after a sunny summer day in the garden.

Scott Vlaun
Editor

Photo captions: (1) Four beet varieties (2) Bull's Blood beet (3) Yellow Mangel beet (4) Chioggia beet