(gentle music)
- In this raised bed right here, I have beets, a
crop that I used to hate eating as a kid, and I now love, and
I'm gonna show you exactly how to grow it from seed to harvest. Beets are thought to have
originated in the Mediterranean, and ancient Egyptians,
Romans and Greeks ate them with the Romans apparently being the ones who first thought to cultivate
them for that swelling of the root or the beet
that we traditionally eat. Now. it's really interesting
that beets are used to produce a lot of the world sugar. Sugar beets, not a variety
we're gonna grow in this video, but just an interesting fact,
and if you've been having some problems in the bedroom, ♪ Oh, yeah ♪
- beets are thought to also be an aphrodisiac, which is
why I've been planting them across (laughs) my entire garden, guys. So, I'm gonna show you some
amazing varieties to grow. Let's head back to the
seedling table and talk seeds. Okay, let's talk beet varieties. In fact, chard and sugar beets
are also in the beet family, chard typically grown for the leaves, sugar beets for that sugar production. We're gonna talk about just
beet beets, the normal beets that we're eating for
that beet root, and I have three different sort of categories here mostly to do with their color. So, the first one is going to be your standard red beet or purple beet. A really popular variety
here is Bull's Blood beet. So, if you want and love
that normal beet flavor, and it doesn't taste like dirt to you, then something like this
is a really good option. Now, if you want to get
fancy with the colors, I've grown this one many,
many times in my garden. This is called a Chioggia beet. So, it is a concentric circle variation. You have this pink, white,
pink, white, pink, white, so when you cut that beat in half, it looks really, really
nice, but it also has the highest amount of
what's called geosmin, which is that sort of compound
that can make some people think beets taste very dirty
or just like plain soil. Not very appetizing. So, if that's you, I might avoid this one. Now we get to my personal
favorite category of beets. This one right here is
from Botanical Interest, and it's called Golden Boy. Great name, I love it. You can also grow Badger Flame
beet from Row Seven Seeds. But all this to say this
is that yellow, orangeish, goldish color that has a
much more mild dirt flavor. There's not that much of that at all, especially when you harvest
it young ,and I find that they're much, much sweeter. All of these you can eat raw. I tend to go for the reds
or the golds to eat raw, but, honestly I personally
love to steam them. We'll get into that a little bit later. So, let's now talk about how to plant them 'cause it's a little bit different than your traditional seed. Okay, we have our Golden Boy beets here, and what's interesting about beets is this looks like a beet seed, right? I have, looks like,
three of them in my hand. Well, the truth is actually a little bit more complicated. Beets are a compound seed. So, if I actually were to cut this in half, you would see it's
kinda little bit hard to see, but there's more than one seed inside what you thought was the seed. Okay, let's plant these guys out. I've got three different trays here. Beets actually are a great
candidate to just direct, so right in the bed
that you're planting in. But contrary to popular opinion, or at least some gardeners
think you can't transplant them, you definitely can. So, I've got a six-cell, these
are our Epic six-cell trays. I'm just gonna do six of each
variety just to show you. Now, you don't have to do this. You could, of course,
just put the seed on top and then put some extra soil on top, but sometimes I just make
a little depression here about half-inch deep on beet seeds. And planting one per hole is totally fine because, as I just mentioned,
that's more than one in the actual hole because it's a compound seed.
(seeds rattle) So, in you go. If you're really paranoid,
then (laughs) you can put more than one in, but I'll just toss one in each of these for now. You're still gonna have about two or three pop up.
(seeds rattle) And when it comes to planting beets, it really is a cool
weather crop preferred. So, in a warm climate like myself, I can grow it from our
spring into our summer, harvesting in that early summertime (seeds rattle)
and summer cools down, I can start to grow it
at that point in time, and then also, right about
now, this is, you know, early fall for us here. I can grow this throughout my winter. Now, if you're in a cold
climate, that's not gonna be the case, but just work
with your planting calendars and check out some of our videos on that. We've done a couple videos. So, in go my beet seeds. I'm gonna store these in a warm area. I really want it above
about 65 Fahrenheit, and I'm gonna wait about five to 15 days, and we should see you back then. It has been two weeks since
we last looked at our beets, and we have a few coming up. In this case, we only had
one little seedling come up, and, of course, over here, there are five. Now, in some cases, you do
what's called thinning out where you actually pick
the biggest seedling. For example, in this cell,
this one would be the biggest, and you would actually
remove the rest of these. But in the case of beets,
what you can do is something called multi-sowing. So, we're gonna let these
continue to grow a little crowded and check in when it's
closer to transplant. It's been about a week,
and these beets are ready to transplant, but before we do that, let's just take a quick look. These are the Chioggias, and these are the Bull's Blood beets, and what you'll notice, like we mentioned, because the beet seed is a compound seed, you sometimes have more
than one popping up. It's actually a big benefit
because you can harvest in a really unique way,
which you'll see later on. But right now, we need to figure
out a good transplant spot, so let's head out to the front yard. Here in the front yard, I
think I found the perfect spot in this tall Birdies raised bed right here just in this little corner. I've got a cleared away area. I used to have some arugula
here and some other crops, just some leafy greens, but
this is a nice little spot. It is full sun, that's what beets want, and they also can handle
some cold but prefer a little bit of a warmer
temperature so, you know, don't put it in the shade
or anything like that. Now, we need to talk about soil and soil requirements. Beets really aren't that
crazy of a feeding plant, meaning they don't suck
up a ton of nutrients out of the soil. What that means is, if you have a bed that you've used once or twice, you haven't even added
that much fertilizer to it, you can actually plant beets after that, and they're not gonna suffer that much. In fact, they might suffer too
much if the reverse was true. If there was too much fertility, too many nutrients in the soil
in too high a concentration, it can lead to forking and
sort of weird looking beets. So, you don't want to over fertilize, specifically when growing beets. Now, we need to think about spacing. Remember, we just talked about how you can multi-sow these beets. So I'll show you one example
of how you might go about planting a multi-sown beet. The thing you must remember when you are transplanting beets, you don't have to direct sow them. We've already established that. You can transplant them very successfully, but you need to make sure
you don't damage the taproot. Beets form a taproot;
that's actually the thing that you are eating when
you're eating the beet. So, if you're using something
like our Epic six-cell trays, it actually makes it really
easy 'cause there's a big hole at the bottom, and you can
pop it out without damaging. So, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. If you're not, you wanna
gently sort of massage whatever tray you're using, and you can just get it out
that way, so take a look. I've removed it without damaging the seed or the seedling or the root at all. Now, what I can do is
I can just kinda gently loosen this up. You don't need to go too crazy here, but just gently loosen this up. Now, this is two beet seedlings in one, and that's actually
totally fine in this case. If you want really long,
full, healthy beets, you do wanna make sure
that this soil is free of any rocky material. It's kind of like growing a carrot. If you throw some rocks down in there, and it hits them, that's gonna cause some weird misshapen beets. So, come in, just separate
a little bit of the soil, plop in your seedlings. I call it holding their hair, but you can call it whatever you want. I like to do this, just hold the seeds and
make sure I don't, you know, accidentally bury any of the
leaves or anything like that, and boom, I have my first beet seedling, actually my first two, in the ground. Now, what you'll see later
is, as this develops, you can actually harvest the
smaller one once it gets nice and sizeable without
damaging the other one and then let that one grow up even larger. So, it's a way of getting sort of a twofer in the same spot, but let's
plant the rest of these out and talk spacing really quickly. So, beets are kind of interesting
in that you can eat them literally right now if you wanted to, wouldn't really be getting
too much out of it, or you can grow them in such a way that they get very, very large. So, if you wanna give
yourself the best shot at getting huge beets, I recommend spacing at least
five or six inches away. So, something like that is a good idea. Now, if you don't care or
you're growing baby beets, you could go something
like three inches away 'cause remember, we just talked about this multi-sowing example. Clearly, you can grow them
right next to one another. But, again, I kinda wanna go
for some bigger beets here, so that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go about six inches apart. Our beets are in, and
there are only two things to think about right now. Number one, give it a quick water. (water sprays)
This just helps to settle that soil around the root. Pretty wet here, so I don't
need to give it too much. Just wanna make sure any
air pockets are gone. And then, as you're caring
for these after transplant, you can throw some mulch on. We really like garden straw
here at Epic Gardening, but you can use shredded
leaves, grass clippings, whatever you want, keep that moisture in, and as these settle in,
beets really like even, consistent watering. Actually not watering them enough can lead to them cracking, which
is not what you want 'cause it kind of ruins
the integrity of the beets. So, we'll check in with
these after they settled in and see how they're doing. It's been about a month
now, a little over, and I wanna check on my beets. There's a huge bed of
beets here, but the ones that we planted are these
red ones right here. And what you're kinda looking for is the size of the leaves
sort of indicates the size of the swelled root or the beet root that we actually harvest, but you can't really see it sometimes. So, what I like to do,
just to check on them, is I'll just kind of brush the soil away and see if I can get a sense
for how big that beet is. Like, this is a good example
of one that's really leafy and doesn't have a very large bulb. And so, it's sort of
up to me at this point. I can harvest it for the
beet greens and a small bulb like a little baby beet, or I can let this one be a little bit and kind of feel around on
some of these other ones. Beets are one of those crops
that, yeah, they're given a specific date range
like 50 to 75 days or so but really depends on conditions, if you're actually going to
get it in that timeframe. Sometimes, you just have to
wait a little bit longer. So, on these ones right here, they aren't quite ready
yet, but one that is, and you can tell just by,
again, feeling for that base. This is sort of a nice, like,
mid-size little baby beet that I could harvest and just give you a sense for it. We've got a little baby beet here. It's not super-impressive, but it does sort of count, and (laughs) you can still harvest and
eat these beet greens, which have actually become one
of my favorite greens to eat, but what I wanna show
you are some backup beets that I planted a little
ahead of these ones here. And these are golden beets, which is actually my favorite variety. And this is where you get to see the power of these multi-sown beets or really just not thinning them out. Take a look at this right here. This is the perfect example. I can't even imagine a better one. Look at the way these beets grew. I'm just gonna clear this
out so you can see it. See how you have this
sort of center right here? This one's going this way,
this one's going this way, and this one's going this way. That's 'cause these were
planted in a triplet, and I never thinned them out. So what you're seeing is, as
this root starts to swell, it'll, of course, push
against all the other ones, and they're still growing
into pretty sizable beets. And if you wanna go for size,
you harvest the biggest one. What's that gonna do? That's gonna free up these
other two to thrive more. That's a really nice
looking beet right there, really solid looking beat. I'm gonna harvest, let's see, probably this guy here
'cause it's pretty sizeable. This is another multi-sown. So, this is one approach. I mean, honestly, you can
harvest beets at any size. Like I said, a baby beet
actually prized among chefs and here you have one
grown in your garden, so take advantage of it if you want to. I'm gonna go for size on these. I mean, these are some honking beets. These are some really quality beets. What I wanna do now is show
you how to process them. So, I'll take these three and my little baby boy and head on
back to the prep station. Storing beets, let's talk about it. It's actually a couple things that you really have to know here. Number one, taking care of the tops. Two ways to deal with these as far as getting them off the beet. One is simple,
(leaves crack) just sort of twist it
off the top like this. Nothing too fancy,
actually very satisfying. The other way is just,
obviously, to take a knife and make a nice clean cut,
but you really want to avoid getting into the actual
root tissue at all. (bubble pops)
You wanna cut above that point. The reason you need to take
(bubble pops) them off is because, as
long as they are connected, they're gonna be drawing
nutrients and water out of the beet root,
which is not what you want. You want this to be the
nice and juicy thing. Now, these you can eat, and
they're actually quite good. They're one of my
personal favorite greens. You steam 'em, you can saute them, kind of cook them like you
would cook collards or kale, but to me, the flavor's
just a little bit stronger, a little bit better. Now, if you're going to
use your beets fresh, well, then you can go
ahead and start washing and processing them. But if you're not, if
you're going to store these, and use them in a couple days, this is about all you wanna do. Just take off all of this
top leaf and stem tissue, leaving that little nub there, and don't do anything else. Store these in the fridge
in like a perforated bag or in the crisper drawer
at as cold a temperature as possible but above freezing, obviously, so somewhere in the 35 Fahrenheit range, we'll put Celsius on the screen. You do not want to wash your
beet before you store it. It's going to decrease the shelf life. Then when you're ready,
you can pop it back out. And I'm actually going to
process this one here for you. Come out, you know, cut the tail off. You can cut this top off. And there you go and, you
know, let's just go ahead and get a cross section. I actually think here, I have
what's called a Chioggia beet instead of a golden beet. I forgot I had planted
these as backups as well. And this is actually one
of the more beautiful patterned beets you're ever going to see. So, I'm pretty sure, when I
do this cross section here, you're going to see these
concentric white and purple rings. That is going to look quite beautiful. So let's take a look, see if
I've done my job right here. I'm gonna come in,
(knife cuts) and there you go. Look at that. Very, very pretty beet and
actually quite a delicious one. (sniffs) Mm, smells good too. One thing I like to do is
actually peel my beets, especially if I'm gonna eat them fresh. You can also give them
a nice little scrub. And then after that,
roasting them has been my favorite way to eat them. But on the Epic Homesteading Channel, I just turn them into beet ravioli, so you can check that out. Hope you had a good time
learning how to grow beets. Good luck in the garden, and keep on growin'.
(peeler peels beets)
