Drop the beets: no-till beet farming
Let’s throw the beets! Beetroots can be grown all year round and are an excellent, aromatic addition to meals. Start growing your own beets no-till with these helpful tips!
Below is an excerpt The Living Soil Handbook By Jesse Frost. It has been adapted for apply on the Internet.
How to grow beets without plowing
Beets, both cool and heat tolerant, are one of my favorite year-round vegetables. Beetroots are also an excellent catch crop. And when placed on the table, they really attract customers and we can sell almost every bunch of beets we bring.
First steps: estimated seed quantity
We replant most of our beets; we buy 1,200 seeds for a 30 m bed or 300 seeds in one row. We don’t apply seed beets often because (like Swiss chard) beetroot seeds are multi-sprouted seeds that produce many plants from one seed, which results in too dense plantings.
In periods when we plan direct sowing, we buy about 1,600 seeds per bed.
Preparing a bed for no-till beets
The beds are fertilized and a compact amount of compost mulch is added if necessary. Before transplanting, soak the trays with beetroot seedlings in compost tea or extract. During most summer months – behind schedule May to behind schedule August – we plant all of our beets in 30% shade or in a tunnel.
A little shade helps the beets get established, but it also allows for a more marketable green. When direct seeded, beets take 5 to 7 days to germinate and prefer soil temperatures around 85°F (30°C). Keep the soil wet until germs appear.
Pest control
As long as we plant beets in some shade, we don’t have problems with Cercospora leaf spot or other common leaf diseases. Bladder beetles sometimes attack our beets.
If we see blister beetles on other crops (usually spring chard when it starts to wane in the summer), we cover the beets with insect netting such as ProtekNet or a airy row cover during transplanting or after emergence.
Weed control
As with other crops, our weed control strategy is to transplant beets into mulched, weed-free beds. However, in the case of direct sowing, the situation is slightly different. The beds are prepared with plenty of compost mulch.
To speed up germination, we will add either a bulky row cover or a tarp with the white side down for a few days – you want this process to be as tiny as possible to discourage competition.
Beets are a 50- to 70-day post-emergence crop, so they should be tilled at least once after emergence, even if no weeds are evident.
Establishing seeds and sowing
We seed all of our beets into 11⁄8 inch (29 mm) diameter soil blocks made using Stand-up 35 Soil Blocker. We place only one seed in each block. In spring, in our greenhouse, we place soil blocks on a heating mat to speed up germination.
In summer, they can germinate in a well-ventilated greenhouse, without the need for bottom heating.
The blocks are lightly covered with vermiculite or soil mixture to retain water and encourage germination. To prevent mice from having access to these blocks, place them on a table that the mice cannot climb on (metal legs usually work well). Mice will eat the beet seeds.
Selection of beetroot seeds
Beetroot seeds vary in size, so when sowing beetroot seeds directly into the beds, we adjust the size of the beetroot seeds to the seeder or sowing disc. Generally, at Jang we apply an LJ-24 shaft with the sprockets set to 14 in the rear and 9 in the front to space the seeds about 2.5 inches (6 cm) apart.
The beet disc on the EarthWay seeder is also effective, although the risk of over-seeding is greater with the EarthWay seeder as it lacks Jang accuracy. When direct seeding, we like to start with a few trays of extra beets to fill in any gaps.
Spacing and planting
When transplanting, we space four rows about 7.5 inches (19 cm) apart and transplant beets in a row about 4 inches (10 cm) apart. A rainy day is a good opportunity to skinny out the blocks in the greenhouse to two plants per block.
This is more effective than trying to skinny in the field. For direct sowing, we sow five rows of beetroot seeds at a distance of 5 to 8 cm. We skinny out seed beets directly only if necessary.
Harvesting and yielding of beets without plowing
We harvest beets after all the tender vegetables are gone, but before crops like carrots are ready. When the beets reach 5 cm in diameter, tie them in the field with rubber bands, tearing off any yellow or gritty leaves.
Three vast or four medium-sized beets form a marketable bunch.
We also collect the remaining compact beets in bunches of five or six pieces and sell them as “juvenile beets” – a popular product on our market.
The beets are then gently washed in our washing machine, drip-dried or gently shaken.
We pack them in bags and store them at the market entrance. Harvesting never takes place earlier than 2 days before the market.
Our goal is 300 bunches per 30-foot bed, which works out to $700 to $900 per bed.
Catch crops
Beetroots are quite competitive and are one of my favorite cover crops. They also do not form mycorrhizal associations, so we think it is beneficial for them to have other crops nearby. My favorite combination is plants from the nightshade family, such as peppers, tomatoes and potatoes.
They also work well in a relay crop scenario where, for example, larger beets are thinned out of the bed during the first harvest. A round of summer squash is then planted into this bed. While the pumpkin takes root, we finish harvesting the beets next week.
Beetroots, like head lettuce, are also an excellent filler for poorly sprouting carrots.
Notable struggles when growing no-till beets
Our biggest problems with beets came from over-seeding them, which resulted in a stand that was too stout and didn’t produce vast beets. Thinning beets is extremely time-consuming!
On the other side of the coin, when we sow beets directly into compost, we have found that germination is impoverished.
Finding novel solutions
Our solution was to select a seeder based on the size of a specific batch of seeds, as we mentioned earlier. It also helps cover the beds and keep them extra wet for easier germination.
Finally, mice contributed to the fact that there was no shortage of beets in our greenhouse, and we learned to sprout beets on something rodent-proof.
One technique is to place them on a table with metal legs that mice can’t easily climb up (card tables work well for this) and position the table away from the wall. A neat plastic bag or barrel can also work well when trays of beets are simply stacked on top of each other until the germs appear.