BeetrootBeta vulgaris

Beetroot likes sun but accepts light partial shade, which makes it a good candidate for the slightly less favoured beds of the vegetable garden. It prefers soil that stays cool in summer without becoming waterlogged, and dislikes acidic ground: avoid corners where moss takes hold. Place it after a crop manured the previous year, cabbage or squash, or following peas harvested in July. It is a good neighbour to onions, lettuces and dwarf beans, but not to spinach or chard, which belong to the same family and share its pests.

Loosen the bed with a broadfork to twenty centimetres and work in two kilos of well-matured compost per square metre; fresh manure, as with all root crops, causes deformities. In acidic soil, an application of wood ash or lime in autumn, a handful per square metre, raises the pH that beetroot appreciates. Break the clods finely and rake to obtain an even seedbed. In clay soils, a slightly raised bed lightened with sand improves drainage and warming, which limits bolting in early sowings.

Wait until the soil reaches 10 °C, which happens around 20 April here: prolonged cold on young plants triggers bolting without a root. To stagger, sow in late April, late May and a last time between 1 and 15 July; this final sowing provides the storage beetroot, the sweetest. Draw drills two centimetres deep and thirty apart and drop a seed cluster every five centimetres, then cover and firm. Soaking the seed overnight in tepid water brings germination down from twelve days to six. Choose a bolt-resistant variety for the April sowing.

Unlike the carrot, beetroot transplants very well, provided it is young. Sow under cover from 15 March, in module trays or pressed soil blocks, one seed cluster per cell, and plant out in late April when the seedlings have three or four leaves, without separating the two or three seedlings in a plug: the roots push each other apart as they swell and give medium-sized beetroot, which is perfect. Space the plugs fifteen centimetres apart, water generously and protect with fleece for the first two weeks if the nights are cold. This method avoids thinning and gains three weeks.

Beetroot grows happily in a container on a balcony, where its red or golden leaves are decorative too. Allow twenty-five centimetres of depth and a thirty-litre container for a dozen roots, filled with potting compost enriched with a little garden compost. Sow in April or May, one seed every ten centimetres in two lines, or plant out plugs. Water regularly; the compost must not dry out, otherwise the roots become fibrous. Harvest young, at golf-ball size, to leave room for the neighbours. The young leaves are picked as needed for salads.

Sowing in early April and harvesting flower stalks instead of roots in June. Forgetting that each seed is a cluster of several seeds and not thinning, which gives clumps of tiny roots. Adding fresh manure. Letting the soil dry out in July, then watering heavily: the root splits or forms fibrous rings. Cutting the leaves flush with the crown at harvest, which makes the beetroot bleed and lose its juice in cooking. Letting summer beetroot grow to the size of a cabbage: it turns woody. Sowing the rows too close together, which encourages leaf spot.

Beetroot tolerates moderately dry soil, but its quality depends on even growth. Water with a spray every two days until germination, then once or twice a week in dry weather, about five litres per square metre, at the base or over the whole bed. The trap is alternation: water stress followed by a heavy watering or a storm splits the roots and forms hard white rings in the flesh. A fine mulch solves most of the problem. In September, space out watering for storage beetroot: less full of water, it keeps better.

As soon as the plants have been thinned and reach ten centimetres, mulch with three to five centimetres of dried grass clippings, chopped straw or hemp mulch: the soil stays cool, watering becomes occasional and the shoulders of the roots do not turn green. No fertiliser is needed in soil supplied with compost. If the leaves pale or growth stalls in midsummer, nettle liquid diluted to 10 % gets things going again. A light dressing of ash at hoeing provides the boron and potash that beetroot needs; a boron deficiency shows as corky black spots in the heart of the root.

Thin as soon as the seedlings carry four leaves, keeping the most vigorous of each clump every ten centimetres for summer beetroot, fifteen for storage varieties. The seedlings removed can be replanted immediately at the end of the row, which spreads the harvest by a fortnight, or eaten as young leaves. Then hoe shallowly between the rows every two weeks until mulching, without damaging the crowns. Beetroot needs neither pruning nor staking; simply remove yellowed leaves at the base and push a little soil back over shoulders that show above ground.

Beetroot is fairly trouble-free. The leaf miner bores pale tunnels in the leaves in May and June: remove and burn affected leaves, and put on insect-proof mesh if you also grow spinach or chard. Leaf spot, small round spots with a red edge, appears on crowded foliage in damp weather: space out, water the soil, remove affected leaves. Flea beetles sometimes riddle young seedlings in dry weather; a spray watering discourages them. Slugs nibble roots that show above ground in very damp mulches: clear the crowns a little in a wet autumn.

Mid-March: sowing in modules under cover. Late April: planting out the plugs under fleece, first sowing in place with a bolt-resistant variety. May: thinning, hoeing, second sowing at the end of the month, removal of mined leaves. June: mulching, first summer beetroot at golf-ball size. Early July: storage sowing, regular watering in dry weather. August: harvest of summer beetroot, thinning of the July sowing, watching for leaf spot. September: storage beetroot growing, watering spaced out. October and November: lifting in dry weather before serious frosts, storing in sand.

Harvest summer beetroot young, between golf ball and fist, by pulling on the crown or with a fork in heavy soil; every other one first, to let the rest swell. Twist the leaves off three centimetres above the crown rather than cutting them, so the root does not bleed. Storage beetroot is lifted in late October or November, before a serious frost, which it tolerates less well than carrots. To eat fresh for as long as possible, rely on the three staggered sowings and on fleece laid over the last row at the end of October, which gains three weeks of harvest in open ground.