My husband is starting up a high-school science project, and one of the plants he's interested in growing is sugar beets. He asked me about growing sugar beets, and I had to plead "no idea, but I know where to find out!"
Does anyone know anything about growing sugar beets? Are they about the same as growing regular eatin' beets? Where does one purchase seeds?
Any help will is greatly appreciated!
growing sugar beets?
Jill...don't know anything about them but have seen trucks loaded with them going down the road. Quite a few years ago they were grown near the area where I lived in N CA. I remember them being really large, as in the size of a cantalope! Maybe even a little bigger than that.
The sugar beet is a form of the table beet, but much larger and courser. A few seed vendors still sell older cultivars to home growers, usually listed as mangels. They have a longer growing season are are of course much larger than a table beet. They are grown the same way except you need much larger spacing. Today the commercial crop is grown from monogerm seed, which alleviates the need for thinning. Natural beet seed com in clusters.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/571957/sugar-beet/68035/Culture
http://www.solarnavigator.net/solar_cola/sugar_beet.htm
http://www.sucrose.com/lbeet.html
Thanks so much for the information--I'll pass it along!