Beetroot is tasty and healthy and can also be harvested late in the year. In addition, its cultivation is very easy. Learn how to plant beets in your own garden or balcony below.

The leaves of the beetroot are also edible

Table of Contents

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  1. Soil and location for the beetroot
  2. Sow beetroot
  3. Prefer beets
  4. Good neighbors for beetroot
  5. Cultivate beetroot
  6. Harvest beets
  7. Grow beetroot

    8. Soil and location for the beetroot

    Like almost all vegetables, beetroot needs a lot of sun to grow. Therefore, choose a location with as much sun as possible. Furthermore, the beetroot has deep roots and penetrates best in loose soil. Here you can find out more about the perfect location for beetroot.

    Prepare the ground

    In order for the beets to thrive optimally, you should prepare the garden soil accordingly. To do this, proceed as follows:

    • Loosen the soil slightly with a rake.
    • If heavy or medium eaters grew on the bed last year, you should dig some compost under the ground to increase the nutrient content in the soil.

    tips

    Never sow beets in the same spot as last year! Other beet varieties should also not have been at the sowing location beforehand.

    Sow beetroot

    Beetroot can be sown directly into the bed from the end of May or you prefer the small plants at home on the windowsill.

    When sowing directly in the garden, proceed as follows:

    • Draw several gutters 30 cm apart with a depth of 1 to 2 cm using a string.
    • Put one or two seeds into the soil about 5 centimeters apart.
    • Cover the seeds with soil.
    • Water the freshly sown beets well.

    You can find out more about sowing beetroot and interesting varieties here.

    tips

    Birds love beetroot seedlings. It is therefore advisable to attach protective nets or scarecrows such as old CDs to keep predators away from the bed.

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    Prefer beets

    Beetroot can be grown at home from March. This saves pricking and thus time and work. For pre-breeding, you can use coconut sticks or similar suiting devices, or you can use an egg carton that you cut apart and fill with soil. You can later plant the box and plants in the bed. When pre-breeding, it is important to ensure that the substrate does not dry out. To do this, cover the culture vessel with cling film. You can find more tips on moving forward here.

    Good neighbors for beetroot

    Like all plants - and people too - beetroot thrives best when surrounded by neighbors who are in good spirits. These include bush beans, lettuce, dill and cucumbers. It does not get along well with potatoes, leeks or corn. Here's a complete rundown of good and bad neighbors for beets.

    Cultivate beetroot

    Beets need a lot of water, so you should water them thoroughly, especially on dry days. To additionally protect the soil from drying out, you can mulch the bed.

    Although the beetroot is one of the middle feeders, it is happy about a fertilizer application with compost. You can find out here how and when to treat your beets with compost.

    Mulch protects the soil from drying out and reduces weed growth

    Prick the beetroot

    Beetroot is usually sown too densely to ensure that there are no gaps in the bed. However, the beets need space to grow. Therefore, the plantlets should be pricked out as soon as the plantlets are large enough to be pulled out. Healthy plants remain in the bed at a distance of about 7 to 10 cm. You can find out more about the correct procedure for pricking out here.

    tips

    You can use the pickled plants in salads or as edible decorative elements for delicious dishes.

    Harvest beets

    Depending on the variety, beetroot has a development time of three to four months. However, tubers and leaves can also be harvested and eaten at any other time. If you have sown at the end of May, you can harvest your large tubers at the end of August/beginning of September. If you want to harvest later in the year, postpone sowing accordingly. In any case, the last harvest should be done before the first frost.

    To get the bulbs out of the ground, firmly grasp the greens with one hand and pull. If the turnip is very tight, you can loosen it with slight jerks.

    Grow beetroot

    If you want to harvest beetroot seeds yourself and use them for propagation, you have to be patient: because beetroot only produces seeds in the second year. If you want to grow seeds, leave a few plants in the fall and cover them with some brushwood to protect them from frost. In the coming year, an impressively tall flower stalk with green-red flowers develops, which sets seeds in autumn.

Category:

Vegetable garden