Unless you plan to cover your later beets, I would plan on only one planting, now. Your beets will come in stages anyway because they almost never reach the "pulling" stage at the same time. So you can pull some and leave some. Or you can pull some at a smaller size and leave some to get bigger. Every "seed" of beet is actually a capsule with 2, 3, or 4 seeds inside. So it is important to thin them when they are small. You can add the tops of the thinnings to salads when they are a couple inches tall.

Congratulations on getting a harvest this time! Well, if it were my garden, I'd probably pull that tomato plant, seeing as it is diseased. I'd PULL it, to get some of the roots out at the same time.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Thanks guys. I heard you can eat beet tops- but how. After I pull the beet, or harvest like lettuce while the beet is still growing? Do I cook or eat raw? I don't like greens- collard greens, polk, etc- but I do like cabbage and a little spinach so what is the best way to eat them?

My bed has some cypress mulch on top. Do I scoop away the mulch, plant seeds, then scoop the mulch back over? Will they seed through?

Sorry so many questions.

When you thin the beets--see my post, you will have to thin--you can eat the young tops in salads. Then if you pull baby beets, you can steam the tops. As the plant gets older the tops get tougher and stronger, but some people eat the tops of fully mature beets. I usually pull off the older outside leaves and just cook the younger inside ones..

I would pull the mulch back until the plants are up a couple inches and then tuck it back. It may protect from frosts later in the season.

Will the tops be large enough to eat when I thin out?

Do I need to leave the mulch off for now? It's not very thick and is the only thing keeping weeds out and moisture in.

Thank you for all your help.

The spacing of beet rows and of beets within the rows can be found on the linked document from OSU which addresses fall planting in OK.

If you thin once the beets are a couple of inches tall, you'll have baby beet leaves a couple of inches tall---so think of them as something small you'd toss onto a salad not as some big mass of greens you'd cook like spinach leaves.

Just rake back the mulch in the area where you are sowing seed, exposing the soil where the seed is planted. Sow the beet seeds at the recommended depth and water. Keep the mulch pulled back until the beets have sprouted and have gotten a couple of inches tall. After the first thinning, you can gently rake the mulch back up around the young sprouts to keep weeds from sprouting too closely to the young beet plants.

You'll a little late on planting the beets, so all you can do is hope for a long, mild fall so they have time to grow and size up before the nights get really cold. Beets can handle recurring cold nights and even frosts for a while, though, so you do have plenty of time to get a good harvest even though you're starting 2-4 weeks late. I've had beets that were planted in fall remain actively growing some years until December. Usually a night with temperatures in the teens will freeze the foliage back to the ground in early December. If warmer weather follows, sometimes they leaf out again. It just depends on what the weather is doing in any given year.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: OSU Fall Garden Guide

For fall beets, it;s not a big deal if you don't stagger them. The ones that don't get harvested will not get woody and oversized like a spring planting of beets. Just make sure the roots don't freeze - use row cover or straw mulch and you're good to go. The row cover will also assist them in growing until well into fall and winter - possibly up to New Year's Day. Oklahoma weather at that time of the year resembles early November weather here and I can harvest beets up to early November here with row cover protection (unless it's an unusually cold fall).

This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Thu, Sep 4, 14 at 17:26

Thank you everyone! I did just as Dawn said and planted the beets today. I am looking forward to eating them!

I planted beets on Thursday too, outside. Will plant a few in the greenhouse when I plant that stuff in a month. I also planted three kinds of radishes, some spinach and three kinds of lettuce. I'm ready for fall salad.