How to Grow Beets All Year

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey you all farmer jesse here today we are going to do a little beat rundown also known as table beats or beetroot or blood turnip wait people call it blood turnip why don't we call it blood turn it's like the most metal vegetable name ever i feel great about our beet production but i also spent some time digging into the research and seeing what the commercial folks do as well as pestering some other farmers i know for their tips and tricks so i learned some interesting stuff while worth sharing i'm going to talk seeding versus transplanting a little about paper plots plots paper pots intercropping options with beets harvest stuff i'll try not to make too many beet puns i said try so let's do it [Music] first things first if you're not subscribed to this channel make sure to hit the subscribe button and if you are subscribed you are awesome and if you gain something from this video or any of our work you can always support it at patreon.com no-till growers or pick up a copy of the living soil handbook from notilgrowers.com where the proceeds go to making you more content like this okay so let's start with some obligatory beat basics here first beets are delicious let's establish that right at the top second they come in a few different colors and shapes from the golden beet to the candy striped or kyoja beet to the red beets and the cylinder beets so named for their cylindrical roots beets originated in the mediterranean as what are referred to as sea beets that grow on the coastlines of northern africa and southern europe this beach bum genesis may explain the beets tolerance for sodium and slight preference for boron both being fairly available nutrients and seawater however just because beets derived from sea beets does not necessarily mean they have the same levels of salt tolerance they do have some solid tolerance but there have been studies on treating beet fields with salt water to reduce weed pressure but those have not been super fruitful a for effort on the idea because excessive sodium can be highly toxic to plants and beets may have like i said a slightly elevated salt tolerance but it didn't work at least in the research i found and in some cases harmed the beets as much as the weeds so let's start there don't treat beets like a sea creature at least not exactly for fertility and bed prep i do add a small amount of kelp as a biostimulant and to give them a small taste of their birthplace and by small amount i mean roughly like a quarter pound per 200 square foot bed per year but unless my soil tests tell me to do otherwise i'm not adding any sort of sodium or boron or salt water spray or sand castles or anything else c related i do dip the trays in a little bit of vermicast slurry before they go out into the field for microbes as i do with all of our trays um that's just a good way of inoculating plants right at the base these are light feeders but if i have not fertilized that bed or if i feel a little iffy about the previous crop i may add eight or so pounds of a good fertilizing compost on that same 50 foot by 40 foot wide bed 40 foot 4 foot wide they're not 40 feet wide i also do broad fork if compaction is detected like literally every vegetable save for maybe i don't know watercress they prefer well-drained soils one day i will find that vegetable that likes really poorly draining soils because i've got some work for it so yeah a little broad forking can help if the soil is in kind of rough shape uh generally a light compost mulch is a nice thing to have on beet beds to reduce weed pressure especially if direct seeding before we talk about seeding though you know versus transplanting some quick but pertinent seed facts about beets are in order most beet seeds are multi-germ which means they have multiple embryos inside of each seed pod so you plant one seed and you can get multiple plants out of that same seed now there are also such things as monoderm beets specifically bred for having fewer embryos per pod i actually don't know how they do that so i've heard that they actually cut the seed maybe somebody can enlighten us in the comments section but anyway i know johnny's selected seeds sells at least one mono germ beet right now as i record this called moneta my typical varieties though are zeppo and boro for red though i also have no issues with like detroit dark red or red ace or any of those classic blood turnips i used to grow a lot of kyoja and i only stopped because the red ones tended to sell better at market kind of simple there i also really loved the flavor of the solyndra beet and it was a chef favorite as well but had a harder time selling them at market as well because the shape i don't know threw some customers off maybe i do like growing the golden beets in the spring like touchstone though i don't grow them as much anymore because they were often a little more finicky than the red beets and that may just be my soil or you know management or harvest or i don't know but if the beets got any scuff mark on them or dirt or whatever i often had a harder time selling it because any damage stood out so much the other important thing to know about beet seeds is that they are biennial meaning that if they experience an extended cold snap and then a warming up period they will likely bolt that said beets are very cold tolerant and can take a series of frosts as well so like in the fall or over the winter and most beets store very well even if not necessarily grown as a storage beet they can store in a closed container in a refrigerator temperature for several months [Music] this all affects the time of year when we plant and how we personally plant different beet crops so we start our first beets in like mid-february in soil blocks we use the 35 block soil maker and add one seed or seed pod or seed cluster whatever you want to call them per block beets like a relatively warm germination temperature like in the 80s a fact that will be important shortly so we put them on a heat pad the trays until we see germs then we remove them so they're not growing too quickly based on how much sunlight is available we protect those seedlings from getting too cold with row cover or possibly heat if needed but we also ensure that wherever we keep them is well ventilated because damping off can be a major issue with this crop family damping off just being the foliage succumbs to one of many plant pathogens but generally some sort of fungi this results in a slimy look and can rapidly destroy a whole tray of beets or chard or spinach or whatever all the same botanical family there the stamping off is caused by excessive moisture and poor ventilation so make sure to bottom water where possible and run a fan in that area so this is the transplant size i prefer roughly about this you could go a little smaller and maybe slightly bigger but you really don't want to go much bigger because those roots will start to get into other soil blocks if you're using cells mape or wind strips you could go bigger also this is the heat mat i got it from johnny's it's like four feet long we do start sowing beets in mid-march in the field but they will take a long time to germinate and a long time to grow in those cooler soils generally i prefer direct seeded beets to transplants for a few reasons one transplanting beets can be a chore and the profitability knows dives if it's done too slowly two the beets are more uniform and tend to be performed better when direct seeded and the beads can be thinned more easily when they're direct seated so when you thin that is to say when you pull a plant from a cluster to open up the space when you thin from transplanted beets the other beets in that cluster do not size up as well if at all the root systems in the cluster itself on beats are somewhat sensitive and they tend to become bound together in the soil block or cell or whatever you're using that means that you really have to pull that whole cluster just to make that clear if i pull this one when they're mature that one won't necessarily size up because they were transplants and the roots are kind of locked together roots are a little bit more sensitive with beets when beets are direct seeded you can thin the mature beets without issues or at least without many issues leaving the smaller ones to mature a lot better than they do if they're transplanted in clusters and i know that's kind of a popular idea of planting clusters and then just pulling the beets as they're ready but i've done this for like 13 years now and i've never really seen it work that well from transplanted beats feel free to disagree and in fact feel free to add any beat insight you have in the comments section i do not have a monopoly on all the good advice or good experience so yeah help a farmer out anyway we plant beets every week all summer and i directly sew some and transplant others i know people will wonder what cedar i'm using and the answer is that beet seeds are fairly variable and some are even pelletized so i can't tell you because i adjust the cedar to the seed though it is almost always the jang with one of the 24 hole seed rollers and i generally have the sprockets set to 11 and 11 which gives me about 1.5 inches between seeds i also have had good luck with the earthway cedar and the beet plate that cedar setup usually just puts them down maybe a little bit too thick so thinning may be more necessary thinning them when they're young just wait until they are a few inches tall and thin for a nice salad or whatever you want to use them for or you can wait to thin them as baby beets which is fine as well that may just slow the other beets down if transplanting i never leave more than three plants per clump okay almost never if there are more than three plants per clump i will pull that extra one bef while i'm planting not after it's in the ground uh with direct seeding i shoot for a beat every two to four inches in five rows on a 48 inch bed which would be about three rows on a 30 inch bed means for seed purchase i am aiming for about 15 seeds per foot expecting some won't germinate for transplanting i aim for two to three plants per block and i plant six rows on a 48 inch bed which would be about four rows on a 30 inch bed the transplants are roughly 7.5 inches apart in the row and the rows themselves are about 7.5 inches apart i just use the 4x4 gridder from neversink farm and eyeball the two outer rows because it's built for 30 inch beds and not 48 inch beds really helpful tool though one note on this i pulled our instagram followers and found an enormous range of approaches on how they transplanted beets the most common spacing was four inches apart with one seed per cell which is also something we will do but only in the tunnel because too tight of spacing in the field can leave the greens more susceptible to leaf spot or at least that's my working theory the next most popular spacing among respondents was six inches apart with two to three seeds per cell and honestly i saw everything in between as well even the people using paper pot seem to vary a bit with some using two inch chains with a single seed and others using four inch or six inch chains with two seeds or three seeds we don't use the paper pot system because we've not had great luck getting it to work in our system but if there was ever a crop it made sense for it seems to me it would be beets i've heard that the beets can get caught in the chains but it seems that is not that common as long as they are planted deep enough i don't know paper pot people feel free to chime in with your experience in the comments section hand transplanting can be slow so to speed up the transplantation process i always plant with both hands beets can just be a lower profit crop if you know too much time is taken at transplant or if you have to do a bunch of weeding and cultivation so in transplanting i hope for around 300 bunches of three beats a bunch off of my 50 foot by four foot bed at my usually one for three dollars or two for five dollar marketing scheme that means the bed is worth roughly eight hundred and dollars minus labor and expenses that's not as high as lettuce or carrots or a lot of stuff that we grow but it's not bad and i like eating and selling and dropping beets i mean i made it this far without making a beet bun i feel pretty good about that [Applause] [Music] the last thing is that i will plant every week all the way up until late september when they are starting to go into the tunnel i like to plant in you know late september early october our last like big planting let those size up and then just let them kind of hang out over the winter or harvest them as i need to i like a big fall planting for storage beets so at least a few beds that will all get big and ready for storing over winter some things i've observed is that beets do really well in a tunnel year round in the field the perhaps the stress and humidity in our climate seems to bring on the circus bora leaf spot that i kind of referenced earlier in our hot humid climate climate it's basically unavoidable except in the tunnels remember this is a dry climate crop so you your high humidity growers are just going to have to improve your soil as much as you can which will help and grow the beets under cover where possible i also suspect with absolutely no research to back it up just being honest that beets like the tiny amount of shade provided by the tunnel and we always add a little shade cloth at transplant to help get them established in the summer oh and before i forget beets are not super easy to convince to germinate when you are direct seeding and they take several days to germinate so if you have a tarp or landscape fabric that you can put white side up preferably on a moistened bed after sewing that will help leave it a few days and then remove it just before you see seeds maybe two or three full days maybe three or four if it's cooler times of the year that humidity will help improve the germination just try to remove that tarp at night so that you know you're not kind of subjecting those young seedlings to really intense sunlight kind of the same as carrots like in this video for harvest i bunch them with rubber bands in the field for market like i said two or three usually three for a bunch for medium sized beads two per bunch if they're really large and maybe i will do four or even five if they're really small and i bring all three sizes because you should never assume what your customers want i have baby beet fans large beet fans and beet green fans who could care less about the beets themselves speaking of greens if your beets grew and then cercospora leaf spot kind of ravaged the greens you can remove the greens and sell the beets loose just that way or store them that can happen here and it's really frustrating and reduces profitability a lot but don't waste the beets they are still delicious it doesn't seem to affect the flavor that much if they were already established so again under the cover of a tunnel is the preference for us but obviously i only have so much tunnel space so sometimes they get the field i also like inner planting beets with tomatoes and peppers those two families seem to get along really well and the beets seem to like a little bit of the shade cast by those larger plants plus it gets you a profitable crop from a bed of say tomatoes that can take two months or whatever to mature into anything sellable post harvest we just wash them kind of carefully you don't want to damage the greens then we store them in totes in the cooler and then stack them high on the table at market i missed the beets regularly with a water bottle at market as well to keep them shiny and looking fresh we don't do a lot of wholesaling beets but chefs usually like uniformity and may or may not want the greens every place will be different for retailers we usually sell with greens off unless we can trust that they will keep the greens looking fresh what else can i say i don't want to get too much into beet nutrition or cooking or anything but i will say borscht it's just a really fun word to say oh and i don't have a lot of pest experience honestly though rabbits and deer can be an issue i hear leaf miners are trouble with beets in certain areas for which i would advise insect netting as soon as germinated or transplanted i did have blister beetles once but that seemed like a random one-off infestation that i've not had again since i guess insect netting in that case too i don't know let me know your beat issues and maybe myself or someone else can help because this is a long video so i will let all of our really awesome subscribers flesh out any of the details i missed or got wrong in the comments section also i do a breakdown of several different crops in the living soil handbook and when you pick it up from no tillgrowers.com the proceeds go to making you more content like this otherwise like this video if you like this video make sure you are subscribed to the channel thanks for watching we'll see you next week bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that was a long video i am beat okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 495,983

Keywords: table beets, beet greens, cercospora leaf spot, beet sea water, beta vulgaris, blood turnip, beet production, how beets grow, sea beets, beet history, beet farming, beet farmer, beet grower, market garden, permaculture, homestead, amend, no till, no dig, beet

Id: -w1tvgVj-9k

Length: 17min 44sec (1064 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022