Harvesting Heirloom Beets

The video didn't turn out as well as I had hoped; unfortunately some things you have to get right on the first take, like say, harvesting beets, since it's impossible to replant them and pull them up again. Oh well. 

You can watch the video at: http://youtu.be/HQTQt9LS-Nw.

These are heirloom Red Detroit Beets, which are available at Botanical Interests. They are very hardy. I planted 60 of them, all of them germinated and sprouted. Unfortunately, those stupid varmint rabbits ate 40 of them before I could get varmint fencing up. 

I ended up with 20 plants and beet roots, 11 pounds of beets, including two beets which were one and one-half (1 1/2) lbs each. I also harvested 3 gallons of beet leaves. I'm hoping to find yellow lentils (mund dahl) today so I can make curried beet mund dahl. I also squeezed two pints of beet juice out of just the stalks. DD17 wants me to make dehydrated beet chips, so I'm going to try some of that out of the 11 pounds of beets.

Overwintering. This is one of the parts of the video which didn't turn out well, and I couldn't use a different spot which was sunny. So here's how you do it. You leave the entire beet in the ground, give it a 1/2 to 1 inch hair cut at the stalk (leaving no more than an inch of stalk attached to the actual beet.) Pile about 4-6 inches of mulch on top of it. Leave it alone for the winter. In the spring it will shoot out new stalk and flowers, the flowers will create seed and you will have a great harvest of heirloom seed (I'm hoping anyway!)

The other way to over winter is to dig up a beet, leave the dirt attached to the beet. Haircut the stalk down to 1/2 to 1 inch. Find a box or other container, fill the bottom of the container with a few inches of sand or sawdust (I live near the beach, so guess which one I chose), place beet in container on top of sand/sawdust, fill container to brim-ish burying the beet in the sand/sawdust.

Place container in freezer or refrigerator. BTW, I couldn't find a box, so I used a #10 can with a white plastic lid, a good use for all those excess cans. I don't know that you need a lid per se, I just did because I had extra, and it keeps my well meaning, but unknowing family from seeing a can of sand in the freezer, wondering "what's this?" and tossing it. In the springtime, unbury the beet, replant, and hopefully, see new stalks, flowers and seeds. 

It will be interesting to see (1) if it works and (2) if it makes a difference which method you use, not like this is a scientific sampling or anything.

BTW, these were 2009 seeds for a 2010 planting that I used. So buying heirloom beet seed paid off. I will use up all the rest of the 2009 seed next spring, and hopefully will have generated enough from this year's crop to keep me in beet seed heaven for a long time to come.

You may have noticed the wood chips. I loosely follow the Back to Eden method. I really like it, and so far have had great results with everything I've planted.

I just love vegetables which have to either "die" on the vine to harvest (quinoa, amaranth, pinto beans) or I can just leave in the ground over the winter to get next year's seed crop (beets, kale). Yep. Lazy gardening. Just my style.