Understanding beets and raised gardens

[docfox]

Hi there,
Any advice would be appreciated.
I plant beets every year, and have been successful only once. That was the year I dug out actual yard and grew them straight in the ground. I have a number of raised beds that I use, in a number of different "climates"- one rather shady, some near my driveway where it gets right toasty (for the Pacific Northwest), a couple are just moderate. I always start the beds with fully composted horse manure (along with the straw and hay from bedding). I thought maybe beets just didn't like that, so a couple of times, I have leveraged the manual labor of the moles and relocated regular dirt for them, still no. I always provide a little lime for them. I've tried different varieties. I've tried from seed and also from starts. The plants live, so it's not like they're dying, but they're always quite stunted, the greens not very productive, and the roots like the size of a small radish. And it's not that I'm pulling them early, they push up and out of the dirt at that size. And they're hard as a rock. Well, okay, maybe more like a piece of wood.

I'm thinking there must be some basic philosophy I'm not getting.

[billw]

How's your pH? Beets like a little lime in our rainy and acidic environment.

How close are they spaced? Because there is more than one seed in a beet capsule, sometimes they end up pretty crowded.

[docfox]

It could be the pH, and I need to add more lime. Or maybe the compost is more acidic than the soil. They still have ample space when they push up.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I'm thinking there must be some basic philosophy I'm not getting

Fertilizer? Most manures are not fertilizer, but soil amendment. If you told us you had large vegetive tops and no root I would say to much nitrogen, but in your case sounds like not enough.

Eric

[applestar]

How deep are the raised beds?

Do they have bottoms or are they open frames directly on the gound?

What else do you have in the raised beds besides the "fully composted horse manure"?

What is your idea of "fully composted"? -- I have heard it takes as much as two years as unturned manure piles depending on the bedding.

Do you plant immediately after adding the horse manure without waiting for a month?

[imafan26]

I found especially with root crops you need to be careful with nitrogen. You need a little nitrogen to start off to get the green going but not so much to get greens at the expense of bulb formation. Beets like cool weather and a loose soil. My soil is already high in phosphorus and potassium and it is alkaline at a pH of 7.4 so all I do is use fish emulsion weekly when the plants are 2 inches tall to get a good head of greens started. The fish emulsion will be stopped after three applications so it will not produce greens at the expense of the bulbs.

I live in a warm climate and root crops take longer to mature, but they are ready when the bulbs are about 2 inches in diameter and 3/4 of the bulb is above ground.

Since your tops were not developed either, I think you needed to have more nitrogen at the start. You could add more blood meal to boost the nitrogen or use fish emulsion after the beet seedlings are 2 inches high and thinned to 3 inches apart. The fish emulsion will get the greens off to a good start and you need a good head of greens to produce roots. Stop the fish emulsion after three weeks. The soil should be loose and well drained. Compost should be all you need. I would get a soil test before adding bone meal. I have found on most soil tests that phosphorus, potassium and calcium are usually adequate or high so may not be needed. I would add some to bring down the pH one point if needed, but it will take 6 months to see the effects. Compost tests on the alkaline side unless you are using acidic source materials, but the only way to tell is to test the compost. Usually, for me anyway, adding compost raises the pH of my soils. The soils in 2 of my 3 plots are alkaline from adding compost that has been tested at pH 7.8 and the commercial compost I use, almost always has some chicken manure or lime added so they are also alkaline.

[jbest123]

Do a soil test, use to be less that $20. Root crops require higher phosphate than other crops.

https://puyallup.wsu.edu/soilmgmt/Soils.html

[j3707]

I grow mine in raised beds. I have a sandy well drained soil in the beds, near 7 pH when I checked after first hauling in the soil a few years ago. I mix in at least half a bag (12 lbs.) of composted chicken manure and they typically do well. That's for a 4 foot square by 10" high bed.

Of course, there are variables and I've had sub-par crops.

I also add bone meal, but I'm not too consistent about it. That probably factors into my sub-par crops.

Cylindras seem to the the most efficient for the raised bed space:

1-DSCF1080.JPG (35.8 KiB) Viewed 2144 times

Early Wonder has nice greens:

1-DSCF1033.JPG (33.13 KiB) Viewed 2144 times

[DoubleDogFarm]

Very nice beets j3707. I have also grown Early Wonder Tall Top. Harvest some of them small and eat the tops and young root all together.



Pictured above. I like Red Ace also. I saved a few seeds this year


Eric

[j3707]

Thanks Eric, nice bowl of granola you got there!



*Edited to keep on topic...

[docfox]

Just discovered my notifications were going to spam folder. Thanks for all the replies. So what I'm gleaning is that I need more 'sandy' dirt, and to actually use the fish emulsion in my garage. I figured the manure compost was enough nutrition for them. I don't know how old it is, the neighbors fill on one end, and I pull out the other end, and it's a pile about 6' tall and 25' long. So at least 1 1/2 years old. It's full of earthworms, and I know worm castings are very, very rich, so I kinda feed the worms- adding coffee year round. The beds are about 3 4-5 years old, and I just add to it every year as it diminishes. I also move around the dirt, which is like reverse crop rotation. There is no bottom on the beds.

[docfox]

BTW, them's some beautiful beets!

The ones I had really good luck with were starts and I think they were called candy cane. They were white-red stripped, and got pretty big, lovely lush leaves, and were very tender. But I didn't find them in the store this year.

[j3707]

Thanks docfox - we've got good weather for beets around here. I've seen some like those candy cane beets in catalogs, I'd like to try them sometime.

Sandy soil is just what I happen to have, all you really need is for the soil to be loose and well drained. It would be worthwhile for you to get a soil test. jbest123 just posted on that topic.

Good luck!