Growing Beetroot

Latest Update 2nd June 2020.

Beetroot

• Grated raw beetroot make a healthy addition to your salad, and they are delicious roasted in their jackets while still young.  
• Beetroot juice is considered by many health professionals to confer substantial health benefits. (read more).
• Most of our crop is bottled in a sweet, spicey, pickling vinegar after softening in the pressure cooker for 30 minutes.  Its a tasty staple for salads in our household, and we can usually maintain a continuous supply all year.
• Beetroot softened in the pressure cooker and then roasted with parboiled carrots, pumpkin and potatoes is simply delicious. 
• I propagate a few beetroot nearly every month from seed in my EcoPropagator.  This ensures a constant supply and avoids having to keep a large quantity in preserving jars.

Details

• Variety:                                                    Crimson Globe.
• Family group:                                           Chenopodiaceae.
• Garden bed type:                                      Garden Ecobed.
• Minimum sun per day:                               5 hours.
• Plant spacings (centres):                          125mm.
• Weeks to harvest:                                     8 weeks.
• Good companions:                                    Onions. silverbeet. lettuce. cabbage. dwarf beans.
  
• Climate:                                                   Warm temperate
• Geography:                                              Southern hemisphere. 

Nutrition.

• This food is very low in saturated fat and cholesterol. 
• It is a good source of vitamin C, iron and magnesium, and a very good source of dietary fiber, folate, potassium and manganese.
• More from nutrition data.self.com. 

Maintain Healthy Plants

• This blogpage explains how I maintain healthy plants.  It describes how soil is prepared prior to planting, how to regulate the sun's intensity and how to help protect and feed plants through their leaves.

Propagate Plants Efficiently

•  This blogpage explains how I propagate seeds in a purpose built propagator.

Propagation Plan 2020.

• This blogpage tells you when to sow seeds.

Services Plan 2020.

• This blogpage tells you when to make compost and plan other garden/household related activities.

Growing Instructions

• Sow beetroot seeds in clusters of 4 or 5 seeds per cell in a seed tray each month in organic seed raising mixture covered with sieved homemade compost.  Sow them 10mm deep and water them in well with captured rainwater.
• When the seedlings are big enough, transplant the clusters into prepared soil in an Ecobed.
• Keep the straw mulch well away from the seedlings until they mature.  Water the seedlings in with captured rainwater. 

Harvesting and Storage.

• Start harvesting beetroot taking a few of the largest when they are ready.  Twist the beetroot plants as you lift them so the smaller roots are left behind and the soil is disturbed as little as possible.  Continue to harvest them periodically as they mature. 
• Most of my beetroot crop is preserved in sweet pickling vinegar.
• They are cooked for 30 minutes in the pressure cooker, then cooled and peeled.  After slicing and packing in sterilised preserving jars they are covered with hot spicy pickling vinegar. 
• The jars are placed in the pressure cooker with lids in place and heated for 5 mins at 5 psi to seal the lids.
• The rest is shredded and eaten raw in salads, made into cakes and/or roasted with other vegetables.

Organic Pest Control.

• Beetroots, like most vegetables, are vulnerable to attack from certain pests in my garden.  My blog "Controlling Garden Pests" explains a little about these pests and what to do to protect plants from them.  For details click on the appropriate link below.
• Slugs and snails.
• Greenhouse whitefly.
• Aphids (greenfly).
• Powdery mildew.
• Root knot nematodes.