How to grow beetroot SOW & GROW
Vibrantly coloured beetroot is delicious raw or cooked, brilliant for juicing, and easy to bottle if you want to add wow factor to your homemade burgers. Its naturally high sugar content means you can even use it in your baking – try adding cooked, grated beetroot to chocolate brownies and cake (it keeps them moist and makes the texture lighter) or try substituting beetroot for carrot in carrot cake.
Sow seeds: August to March in warm areas; September to March in cooler areas. Transplant seedlings August to March in warm areas; September to March in cooler areas.
Grow in full sun at harvest at 10-12 weeks. Good for beginners.
Get started: You can sow beetroot direct from late winter until early autumn in warmer regions, and early spring until late summer in cooler spots – although if it’s very wet, wait because this crop does not germinate well in boggy sodden soil. You can plant seedlings over the same periods too.
Step-by-step: Sow beetroot seed about 10-12mm deep and seedlings should emerge in about two weeks. Space rows around 20-30cm apart and leave 7-10cm between each seedling. Keep this crop well-watered as it grows, if it dries out it tends to develop a woody and inedible core; plus the faster the roots swell, the sweeter and more tender they are to eat. It takes about 10 to 12 weeks from sowing until harvest, but you can knock a couple of weeks off that if you plant seedlings rather than sow seed.
GROWING TIPS
Sow or plant beetroot into wellcultivated soil in a site that gets full sun. Beetroot seeds are made up of a cluster of two to four seeds, so you will need to thin your plants so each one can grow to a decent size.
If you are lazy about thinning, sow the variety ‘‘Kestrel’’ which has amonogerm seed and so will produce a single seedling.
Prevailing wisdom with all root crops is to sow direct, as they resent being transplanted. But while it is easy, and much cheaper, to start from seed; a NZ Gardener trial found that there was no marked difference in the size at maturity from seed-sown beets to ones planted as seedlings! Just don’t knock the roots of the seedlings about when you transplant.
You can grow beetroot in pots, although the pots need to be reasonably tall (20-30cm). Opt for round baby varieties and keep the pots somewhere they can get some shade during the heat of the day as if they get too hot you’ll end up with woody roots.
STANDOUT VARIETIES
For good looks, try gorgeous Italian heirloom ‘‘Chioggia’’, patterned inside with red and white concentric stripes; or ‘‘Bull’s Blood’’ which adds glamour to your growing space with its wonderful dark red foliage. For a fast harvest, try ‘‘Action’’ or ‘‘Super King’’, both early-maturing F1 hybrids reach a good size with eight weeks of sowing.
If you are growing beetroot to bottle for burgers and sandwiches, try narrow ‘‘Cylindra’’, which fits more easily into your jars and yields uniform slices, or sow miniature ‘‘Bonny Baby’’ and bottle whole
baby beets (although any beetroot variety can be treated as a baby beet, just harvest it when the roots are still small). If you want a mix of colours, try ‘‘Golden Detroit’’ or ‘‘Touchstone Gold’’, which are both yellow, or ‘‘Albino’’, which is white.
TROUBLESHOOTING
The tender seedlings can be targeted by slugs and snails, especially when the weather is wet. Protect seedlings by using a physical barrier such as a cloche; or start in trays and transplant.
Seedlings will also bolt to seed before the root has reached a decent size if they are subject to some sort of stress: such as sudden and severe changes in temperature, or very dry or very wet conditions.
Don’t leave in the ground too long. If the flesh is pale or white rings appear, the beetroot has over matured and should have been harvested earlier.