Beets

Beets are handsome vegetables, with their vivid red roots and stately green foliage. Indigenous to the cooler regions of the Mediterranean and Caspian seas, beets play a major role in the cuisines of those areas.

If you favor beets in a good Russian borscht or even in a salad, it will pay you to grow your own, because only then will you be assured of having beets at their maximum sweetness and tenderness.

Although beets are grown primarily for their roots, the tops are very nutritious and an excellent substitute for spinach.

My favorite beet is an old-fashioned variety called ‘Lutz Green Leaf.’ It’s also sold by some seed firms under the name ‘Winter Keeper.’ The roots grow larger than those of other kinds of beets and are elongated and rough. Don’t judge it on appearance, however; the flavor is always sweet and tender. The tops of ‘Lutz Green Leaf’ are a distinctive pale green and are the most delicious beet greens I have ever eaten.

A wide selection of other high-quality beets is available to the home gardener, but the old phrase “red as a beet” does not always apply. ‘Burpee’s Golden’ beet is indeed gold in color, and sweet. Then there’s ‘Cylindra,’ which grows eight inches long but is only 1 1/2 inches in diameter. This one is red, and if you like pickled beets, you’ll find it particularly convenient because most of the slices turn out to be of uniform size. The most widely planted of the regular round beets is ‘Detroit Dark Red.’ ‘Ruby Queen’ will produce in areas where other varieties tend to fail.

Each year, after we have pickled a goodly number of beets, we freeze the surplus. Simply slice and cook the beets, add a sauce made of orange juice thickened with cornstarch, and seal them in a plastic bag.

When you plant beets, keep in mind that the root is what counts, so the soil should be as loose and friable as possible. Spade the soil to a depth of at least one foot and work in lots of organic materials such as compost and peat moss. (Manure might cause the beets to split.) If your soil is particularly poor, consider growing beets in raised beds or containers.

Beets are not heavy feeders. As you are working up the soil, add a multipurpose vegetable fertilizer. Then you won’t have to add fertilizer later.

Beets do well in rows; also, you can scatter-plant them in individual plots. Don’t transplant them, however, because that will result in misshapen roots. When you plant seeds, follow the directions on the seed packet as to seed depth and spacing. Each beet seed actually consists of a cluster of two or three that germinate in clumps and need to be thinned to one plant per seed. When the plants are two inches high, it’s very important to thin them as outlined on the seed packet.

Beets, other than ‘Lutz,’ should be harvested when they’re two to three inches in diameter. If they’re left in the soil too long, they become woody.