Beta vulgaris.

Biennial plant, open pollinated.

From the German Mangel “chard” and Wurzel “root”. Also known as fodder beet, field beet or root for scarcity. This is an heirloom beet from 1800s. These beets are monsters - huge beets that can reach 2 feet long and weigh 15 pounds.  They were commonly grown as fodder for livestock, until soy and corn replaced it. These days they are quite rare in North America. These beet beasts are very sweet and will keep for a very long time in sand or the refrigerator (longer than round beets). They are delicious raw or cooked. 

Days to maturity: 80-100 days. 

50 seeds per pack. 

Here’s a quote from the first page of a book titled Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. 

The radish, admittedly, is ore feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. 

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smouldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets. 

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip… 

The beet is the murdered returned to the seen of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin’s favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.

In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in Rasputin. Certainly there is mange-wurzel in the music of Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-e-t——-

Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic asshole-and when you aren’t sitting on it, you can use it as a bowl for borscht.)

An old Ukrainian proverb warns, 'A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil.'

That is a risk we have to take."

Seed starting

I recommend direct seeding in the garen, as soon as the soil can be worked. Sow 1/2inch deep. Beets are hardy and can tolerate a light frost. For a good size yield, thin to 3” apart between roots (you can eat the small beets / beet greens as you thin). Sow every two weeks for a continuous supply. 

Démarrage des graines 

Je recommande de semer directement dans le jardin, dès que le sol peut être travaillé. Semez à 1/2 pouce de profondeur. Les betteraves sont résistantes et peuvent tolérer un léger gel. Pour un bon rendement, réduisez à 3 pouces l'espace entre les racines (vous pouvez manger les petites betteraves ou les feuilles de betterave au fur et à mesure que vous les éclaircissez). Semez toutes les deux semaines pour un approvisionnement continu.