Beets: Planting Advice

Last year I planted some crazy beets.  Totally nuts.  Pounds of them from a very small space.  Tasty, sweet, pretty…

And reviled by just about everybody in my family and everybody that I know.  Poor beets.  They’re like the quirkily pretty chick in high school.  Some people think she’s totally hot.  Other people want to keep her away from their dinner plates and digestive systems.

I like them because they are:

1. Good for you.  As everybody who knows me can attest, I am totally a health nut.  Exercise.  Eat right.  Yoga.  Power of positive thinking.  (Okay. None of that is true at all.  But I do like beets and as a side benefit they are very, very good for you.)
2. Greens are edible too.  Plant them thicker and thin them.  When thinning, eat the greens!
3. Self sufficient.  Try and plant for some overlap of the leaves.  It will shade the soil and prevent weeds.  Just don’t be too crowded.
4. Like grape nuts in seed form.  Their little seeds look like grape nuts and that’s delicious.  Not beet seeds though.  Not delicious at all.
5. Sweet and earthy at the same time.  They’re like very nice hippies.

Last year’s post on planting beets is here. Biggest thing is to loosen that soil up.  For a very good video on planting these suckers, check here at the Cooking Up A Story blog.  (Great new blog find for me…)

Here’s a small bit of the late harvest last year: