by Shepherd Ogden
Beets may never be as glamorous as tomatoes, but very few plants are as nutritious, versatile and easy to grow. And beets just keep getting better. In many cases (think of the supermarket tomato), vegetable breeding has succeeded at the cost of qualities important to home gardeners - such as taste. But not so with beets. Hybrid beets, developed for the beet-processing industry through the work of Warren Gabelman at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, provide earlier, sweeter and more intensely colored roots, with a lot more resistance to common diseases. just about all of the traits that Gabelman has been working on are boons for home gardeners as well as commercial growers, so everyone has benefited.
"We've focused on three to five characteristics in working with beets," said Gabelman recently, when asked where beet breeding was headed, "the size and shape of the roots, the size of the crown and tail, flavor, color and monogerm instead of multigerm seeds." Processors want uniformly sized, round, intensely red beets with high sugar content. They also want monogerm beets with a seed that will grow into one plant, rather than half a dozen, so they won't have to thin their acres of tiny seedlings by hand shortly after emergence. (Normal, multigerm beet seeds are actually fused balls of six or more seeds, which is why home gardeners are always counseled to sow the seed sparsely.)
Variations on a theme These new beets are good, but an unfortunate side effect of this success is that more and more gardeners are growing only the new beets, and as a result the wonderful, though perhaps less efficient, beets of earlier times may soon disappear. The earliest varieties had long carrot- shaped roots, and ranged in color from a reddish black to bright yellow-orange, or even white (though the part of the root above the ground was often green). The colonists brought beets with them when they settled in America, and by the 18th century they grew a full complement of red, white and yellow beets. The 1888 Farm Annual of the W. Atlee Burpee Company listed 12 beet varieties. Many more still exist. A quick review of the 1990 Seed Saver's Yearbook turned up more than 50 nonhybrid beet varieties in four colors and a whole range of shapes and sizes. All the different beet varieties are actually variations of a few basic types. The long carrot-shaped beets - the original form of the vegetable - are represented by the varieties Cylindra, Formanova and Forono. They grow up to an inch or two in diameter and four to eight inches long, with as much as half of their length above ground. These types are excellent for canning because their shape makes slicing easy, They're also a cinch to peel after cooking, as the root slips from its s n with just a little pressure at the tapered end.
Transplanting, or early, beets are small, fast-growing and go by quickly. They are either flattened or globular; the flat ones are mostly descendants of the old Egyptian strains, and will be round if transplanted. Look for names like Crosby's, Little Ball, Early Wonder or Replata. They are used mostly for the first spring planting. Main-crop varieties are commonly the Detroit type or its variants; they mature to a larger size, hold longer and have stronger tops than the early beets. The new hybrids like Big Red, Red Ace, Avenger and Pacemaker are generally crosses of the Detroit types with sugar beets, which contribute resistance to leaf diseases such as western beet yellows and cercospora leaf spot and increase the sugar con- tent for a sweeter flavor.
The larger, storage types like Lutz Green Leaf or Long Season grow to enormous size (we had some that reached four pounds!) without losing their sweet taste. They are shaped like a top, with a lumpy, ridged exterior.
The only generally available golden beet these days is a globe-shaped variety called Burpee's Golden, and while it's not a vigorous plant, the roots are a beautiful golden yellow color. The beets hold their color when cooked and are oh so sweet. Golden beets are grown by some farmers as pigment plants, "to make natural dyes for the food industry," according to Al Burkett, a beet breeder at Petoseed in Woodland, California. "They're used in orange drink and Jello; look on a box of orange Jello and you'll see that one of the ingredients is beet powder."
There is also a white beet that goes under the names Albina Vereduna, Albino and Snow White. It is a large, vigorous variety that has good texture and is very sweet. In Renaissance Europe white beets were the norm, and the French made an excellent salad of mache (corn salad), white beets and mild white onions.
Even more interesting is a variety that goes by the name Chiogga, which is apparently the modern form of a variety known to the French a century and a half ago as Betterave Rouge de Bassano. It has alternating, concentric rings of pinkish purple and white in the root. Also called the Candystripe beet, this early maturing variety has undergone a renaissance in recent years and is now offered by a number of catalogs.
There's even one variety that's used for ornamental plantings. Macgregor's Favorite (also known as the Victoria beet), thought to be of German origin but long cultivated in Scotland, has thin, straplike leaves with a deep purple color and a distinctly metallic sheen. Cold weather increases the intensity of color. The young leaves make a striking addition to salads and are one of the most important ingredients in the exotic but easy-to-grow salad mix called mesclun.
How they grow
Beets are biennials. During their first year of growth they increase in size, and under favorable conditions, store their excess food reserves in the swollen root. In their second spring, this food reserve is used to produce a central stalk on which the flowers, and then seed, are borne.
A late cold snap in spring sometimes fools young plants into thinking they have gone through a full season, and they'll set seed their first spring (at the expense of leaves and stems). This can be avoided by not planting until a month before the last spring frost.
For the earliest beet crop, grow transplants. Beets are one of the few root crops that can be successfully transplanted. Early varieties like Crosby's Early Egyptian (Crosby's Black Egyptian) or the Dutch variety Replata will form flattish round roots if direct sown, but globular roots if transplanted once, just after the first true leaves have appeared.
To raise beets for transplanting, sow the seed balls singly, 1/4 inch deep in a flat of sterile potting soil about two months before the frostfree date. The ideal germination temperature is about 85oF, but beets will sprout even at room temperature. As soon as the seedlings emerge, move the flats to a bright, cool location. Thin each clump to the strongest plant, and after four to six weeks, transplant the seedlings three inches apart in rows a foot apart or in beds on four-inch centers. You can also transplant whole clumps without thinning, but they'll need more room - eight inches on center - and the roots will be somewhat less uniform in size, as some plants in each group will dominate others. Harvest as soon as the roots reach two inches in diameter; early beets don't hold well in the ground and are likely to become rough and woody if not picked promptly.
If you do direct seed an extra-early crop, put a floating row cover over the bed immediately after seeding. it not only keeps the spring rain from packing down the soil in the bed, but buffers temperature swings and provides a windbreak for the delicate seedlings. Some varieties, like Bolthardy, have been bred specifically for early direct seeding, but it's a lot easier - and the beets are a lot better - if you just hold off on planting for a few weeks. Storage beets are best planted about go days before the first fall frost so that they are ready just as the weather cools down. In the garden, beet seed should be sown 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep depending on soil type, moisture and temperature conditions. If sowing in rows, the seed should be spaced one to two inches apart, and the rows six to 12 inches apart. If you want to plant in a grid fashion - recommended for small or irregular areas - set one or two seeds in each spot, allowing eight inches each way from neighboring plants.
Once the plants are an inch or two high, thin each clump to the strongest plant. At the next thinning the tops will be the right size for salad; thin the plants to their final spacing: two inches for cylindrical varieties, four inches for small, round types and six inches for large, late, storage beets. If you seeded on eight-inch centers, it isn't necessary to thin the small types; they'll shove each other aside to make the room necessary for a whole bunch of baby beets to grow in each spot. Larger types should be thinned to the strongest couple of plants in each clump.
The best soil for beets is only slightly acidic, has ample organic matter and is well drained. Cold, wet, acid soils won't grow good beets and the foliage will show it: the areas between the leaf veins will be pale yellow with a mottled appearance. Too rich a soil encourages bolting in early spring and also increases the likelihood of forked and misshapen roots. The best policy is to plant your beets in a spot that was manured the previous fall or spring. Some soils are deficient in boron, which beets require. You can correct it by adding a pinch of borax (1/2 ounce per 100 square feet) in the area where you'll be planting beets.
The worst pest we have had with beets here in Vermont is leaf miners, the larvae of a small fly that lays its eggs on the undersides of the leaves in late spring. The larvae burrow into the leaves and then chew passages between the upper and lower surfaces. Papery gray areas on the leaves are a sure sign of leaf miners. Remove the infected leaves from the plants and burn them to destroy the larvae. in our garden this pest has a relatively short damage cycle, so if we protect the plants in late May with a floating row cover to keep the flies from laying eggs, the leaf miners will be pretty well controlled. An equally easy method for thwarting the pest is to wait until early to mid-June (after the last lilacs are past) to plant beets, when the active season of these quarter-inch, two-winged gray flies is past.
Beets grown in the West may be troubled by the beet webworm. The worm itself may be any shade of yellow or green but will have a black stripe down its back and three black spots at the end of each segment. More likely, though, you'll see its hideout, a leaf that has been rolled up and secured with webbing. Snap off the leaf and crush or burn it.
Leaf spot can be a problem in cool, wet soils. Small, circular tan or brown spots with purplish borders scattered over the leaf surface are a sure sign of this disease. The leaves may yellow and fall off, leading to elongation of the plant's crown. Pick off the leaves and mulch the plants to help control spread of the disease, which occurs through rain or irrigation splash. Burn or turn under all plant residues at the end of the season and move your beets to another bed. Good garden cleanup and crop rotation will prevent most beet diseases from ever getting a foothold. The new hybrid beets are generally more disease resistant than older types.
Out of the ground
You can pick beet greens at any time. Beet roots are best harvested once they have reached a half inch or more in diameter. For storage, the roots can be much larger: two to four inches in diameter. When harvesting storage beets, cut the tops a half inch or so above the crown of the plant and store the roots in damp sand or sawdust just above freezing, either in heaps or in a container such as a barrel or trash can. Don't let the roots touch each other. Under good conditions the beets should keep three to four months.
Beets can also be overwintered in the ground for early spring use, but should be harvested before new growth starts. Once the plant breaks dormancy, the root becomes increasingly bland and fibrous as the plant uses the accumulated sugars in the root to construct a seed stalk.
Whatever the season, and whatever your use, try beets. They don't require a lot from you, but they give back a dividend that outshines the more glamorous garden vegetables.
Copyright NGA
Reprinted with permission HouseNet, Inc.
Don't Skip a Beet