Your best (favorite) beet

I did not think it would be so hard to find everyones favorite vegetables. I have been searching the internet and seed catalogs for hours and am now just confused. Would you please help me? What is your favorite beet to grow in your home garden?

I'll be making this same post in several other veggie categories. Appreciate any help you can give.

Lilygardener

Early Blood Turnip

I grow a couple of dozen varieties of Beets and don't really have a favorite but I do grow Golden,Detroit dark red, and Rote Kugel every year.Beets are inexpensive,easy to grow and isolate the second year so why limit yourself?
Also Sugar Beets make excellent table quality when harvested small.

Farmerdill,
I have read several things about Early Blood Turnip; all good. It will be my first to hunt down and try next spring.

Zebraman,
Detroit Dark Red I have read about and will try. Golden I saw in several catalogues and will also try. Rote Kugel sounds interesting. I haven't seen it anywhere as yet.

Thank you both for the input. It is fairly overwhelming to gather information on the best tomatoes and peppers, but not a lot of fofks talk about their beets. Thanks for sharing.

Lilygardener

zebraman,

Newbie question here -- what does "isolate the second year" mean? Easy to grow, I understand. LOL.

Thanks,

Karen

Early Wonder Top, Detroit Reds, and Golden are all good ones. I usually get enough seed so we can succession plant this one. The whole family likes beets so I had to increase the number of plantings. I must tell you I have a friend who does her own yarn and weaving, she loves the Goldens for their color. She steeps the yarn in the beet water. Very interesting.

Doccat5,

The varieties you named are the ones coming up again and again as favorites and the ones I will almost surely try along with "Early Blood Turnip". That variety was grown by Thomas Jefferson, among others, and appeals to my sense of oneness with the ageless past. It also whets my appetite. I am learning that it is one of the best.

That same connection with the past intrigues me about your friend who makes and dyes her own yarn. Awesome. How many lifetimes would it take to try all good things? For now I suppose we'll just have to enjoy most things through others as we share, one with the other.

Lilygardener

Agreed, my dear. We love the "baby" beets, pull them at about 1-2" in diameter. My sons and granddaughter will eat them raw right out of the garden. Since I garden organically that's not an issue. Their "britches" don't look so great, but what the heck.............LOL

1-2 inches. Will do!

You can cook the tops as well, at least with the baby ones. Very tender, I saute with a little butter and onion and drizzle with vinegrette.

That sound like a treat. I've eaten Collard, Mustard and Turnip greens, but never beet greens. That's because I've never grown beets before and the tops in the super markets here don't look very appetizing. What could possible not taste good sautéed with butter, onion and topped with vinegrette. I am so looking forward to the summer of '08.

Please feel free to have my share of the collards, kale and mustard............not my thing. The beets in the store are too big. I'm talking about baby, baby beets. We do wide row, raised bed gardening and I heavily over seed the area with whatever I'm planting. Once they get true leaves you have to thin the crop.........an iron toothed rake, deep breath and you have all kinds of yummy tops to eat, plus what's left has space to grow and areas for water and light to penetrate.

doccat...you forgot to throw in the feta cheese with those beet greens.

Yummmy!!

Ahhh, beets. Baked beets, beet greens, pickled beets (my favorite!). Can't get enuff of 'em!

Shoe

Doccat5

It's great communicating with a gardener who knows what they are talking about. I am storing all these instruction is my "Beet Culture" file. Since we humans tend to retain only three bits of data at a sitting, I have a lot of reviewing to do over the winter to inculcate all this knowledge so I can go into the garden without having to read the instruction while I'm working.

I grew up on collards, etc. Can't help myself: I love them. What our culture teaches us is interesting, isn't it? I'm from New Orelans and love raw oysters, but say "Yuck" to snails.

Ditto on the snails, but I love raw oysters too.............LOL And I grew up in Nebraska, my mother would be SHOCKED! I hated getting my hands dirty. LOL

Hey Glendalekid; Beets are biennial and do not flower and produce seeds until the second year.When growing open pollinated vegetables you need to isolate each species within a genus (when flowering) to keep your seeds pure.

I don't know that I want to propagate beet seeds, zebraman, but that's a great point. Given there are is a minute group of giant conglomerates that control most of the newer seeds being offer to gardeners. That's some mighty scary reading.

Hi zebraman,

Thank you very much for the info. I didn't know they are a biennial and don't make seeds until the second year. Actually, even if I had I probably still wouldn't have understood what you meant. I'm a real newbie at growing veggies, but I'm learning thanks to helpful, informative people like you.

Karen

Detroit Dark Red

Y'all are making me hungry..........LOL

I vote for Early Blood (thanks farmerdill). A friend grew them and they were very sweet. I grated some raw , tossed in Italian dressing, and they were a hit. When I sliced them, they were so firm and crisp that they cracked. Chiogga seems to do well here too... very pretty, but not quite the quality of EB.

Blankoma white beets taste like great sweet corn when roasted...