Home Vegetable Gardening: You Just Can’t Beat a Beet

There are over a dozen varieties of these tasty vegetables, yet many home vegetable gardeners do not add them to their harvest. They are beets and they come in all shapes and sizes. You are sure to find something that you will find tasty and easy to grow.

Some like it hot, and members of the beet family are…. not included. They prefer the soil to be in the seventy-five to eight-five degree Fahrenheit range (that’s twenty-four to twenty-nine Celsius) for germination, but like the growing temperature in the sixty-five to seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit range. Beets also like the soil to have a pH range as near neutral as possible. It’s best if you keep your soil in the 6.5 to 7.5 range. Use a simple pH soil tester, available from any local home or garden center for under five dollars to obtain an accurate reading, and then adjust accordingly.

You can sow beets indoors usually about five weeks prior to the final frost of the season in your area. You can obtain a free frost zone map of the United States and Europe from our website.

When you move the beets from the indoors to the outdoors make sure you space them out at least four inches. You want to give the roots the space they need to grow and expand. Also, choose a location where they will receive full sun although some species can tolerate light shade.

If you like to, as I do, use a crop rotation system from growing season to growing season, avoid following spinach or Swiss chard with your beets.

If you practice companion planting, bush beans, members of the cabbage family, corn, leek, lettuce, lima beans, onions and radish make for great companions whereas mustard (no not the yellow stuff that goes on hot dogs) and pole beans, make for terrible ones.

Many experts agree that harvesting your beets when they are about two inches in diameter will produce the best tasting results.

Just give your beets a moderate and even watering throughout their life span and you will have great tasting beets in no time.

About the Author
Mike is the owner of Mike the Gardener Enterprises, LLC where you can sign up for their Seeds of the Month Club and receive 4 packs of vegetable, fruit and herb seeds every month.