Beets

Beta vulgaris (Chenopodiaceae or goosefoot family)

Production

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Soil preparation

• Beets should not follow any members of the Chenopod family. Avoid planting beets after potatoes, brussels sprouts, sweet clover or corn.
• Total nutrient uptake is 140 lbs. of N, 14 lbs. of P and 140 lbs. of K.
• Apply compost and other amendments based on the results of a soil test.
• Spread lime as needed to increase both the pH and Ca levels. Dolomite lime will also increase Mg levels. Spread gypsum when calcium levels are low but pH is correct.
• A fertilizer company can add OMRI-listed potassium sulfate to compost if it doesn’t have enough K to meet the crop’s needs. If this isn’t possible, spread the correct amount of fertilizer and incorporate it before planting. Alternatively, you can side-dress it during cultivation. Divide the recommended rate of the soil test in half if side-dressing. 
• Test for boron and apply only as recommended by the soil test. A fertilizer company can add boron to compost to optimize boron distribution. If this isn’t an option, distribute soluble boron through a water solution with a sprayer directly on the soil. If applied directly on the crop, don’t exceed more than 1 lb.of boron per acre to avoid leaf burn. 
• Most vegetable crops remove little P, but at times your soil test result will call for additional P. Unfortunately, there aren’t short-term options for an organic grower to increase the available P levels in the soil. Through the use of animal-based fertilizers, P will build up to a level in the soil that is sufficient for all vegetable crops.
• Jang, Sutton Jr. or Planet Jr. planters in combination with small seeds like beets don’t perform well with plant matter on the soil surface, so avoid planting them after tall green manures.
• Create a fine and firm seedbed when direct seeding beets. Prepare the seedbed a few weeks before planting to encourage weeds to germinate. This provides the opportunity for some initial weed control via shallow cultivation or flaming.
• Alternatively, place a silage tarp over the prepared and irrigated seedbed 3–5 weeks in advance of the seeding date, depending on the time of year. This will flush many annual weed seeds and reduce weed pressure. Remove the tarp when the weeds have died. 

Common recommended fertilizer rates¹

Nitrogen	Phosphorus	Potassium	pH
175	0-200	50-400	6.2-6.5
1Rates are for New York and are from Cornell University’s Nutrient Guidelines for Commercial Vegetable Production (2019). Check the Cornell website for updated guidelines, or consult with local experts for recommended rates outside New York.

Varieties

• Red Ace is a strong performer. Other varieties popular among organic farmers are Merlin, Eagle, Boldor (yellow interior), Bohan, Guardsmark (striped interior) and Chioggia (red and white interior). 
• New York variety trial 
• Washington State variety trial

Direct seeding information for 5- or 6- foot raised beds

Seeder	Rows	Seeds per foot	Seed plate no.	Depth (inches)	Sprocket setting	Notes
Planet Jr.	3	50	20	1/4-1/2
MaterMacc	3	24	144 H 2.5	1/4-1/2	17-19	Use a lower seeding rate for storage beets.
Jang	3	4-12	MJ 24 (small seed) or LJ 12 (large seed)	1/4-1/2	12 hole: front 9/rear 14; 24 hole: 10/rear 11

Seeding time and successions

• Plant beets when the soil temperature is at least 45°.
• For weekly availability, seed bunching beets April–July. You can transplant the first succession after sowing 2 seeds per cell in a 128-cell tray, planting at 7–9 inches apart in the row.
• Put plug trays on a wire mesh bench to encourage air pruning.
• In the northern United States, direct-seed storage beets in July for an October–November harvest.
• You can also transplant beets using a paper-pot planter, which allows you to get optimum spacing and an early start. Start paper pots in the greenhouse. This results in a high germination rate. Beet seed contains more than 1 seed, and pot spacing of 4 inches (LP303-10) is optimal for easy picking. Plant when the beets have developed their first true leaves. Planting later leads to transplant shock. Don’t bury the plants, but make sure the pots themselves are covered to avoid drying out. Irrigate the first week until roots are established. 

Cultivation procedures

• If possible, use stale seedbed practices 1–2 weeks before planting to eradicate weeds. Don’t disturb the soil too deeply, as this can bring up new weed seeds. Alternatively, to avoid disturbing the seedbed, use a flame weeder right before seeding. As another alternative, use a silage tarp as described above. 
• For both direct seeding and transplants, use a basket weeder or wheel hoe when weeds are in the white thread stage, without burying the young crop. Weed control is more effective when you eliminate weeds before they emerge. 
• Hand weed in between plants.
• For the second cultivation, only use sweeps—possibly with torsion weeders—or side knives. To avoid leaf damage, don’t use aggressive in-row cultivation tools. Replace the oscillating hoe with sweeps when using a wheel hoe. 

Deer, disease and insect protection

• Cercospora leaf spot is best controlled by practicing multi-year rotations that don’t include any member of the Chenopod family, along with a good control program for weeds like lambsquarters. Other plants, like sweet clover, can be a host of this pathogen. Applying a mixture of a copper product like Cueva and a Bacillus amyloliquefaciens product like Double Nickel has been observed to be effective. Other controls to consider are Bacillus mycoides isolate J (as in LifeGard); or Streptomyces Ldicus (as in Actinovate) with either Bacillus subtilus (as in Serenade ASO) or Reynoutria sachalinensis, which is an extract made from giant knotweed (as in Regalia).
• Leaf miners can be a serious issue for bunching beets. Use row covers or insect netting to prevent the adult fly from laying its eggs on crops. If row covers or insect netting aren’t an option, look on the underside of the leaves for any eggs. In the northern United States there are generally 3 generations of adult flies laying eggs. Once the eggs hatch, or when you see the first signs of damage, apply a spinosyn-based product like Entrust every 5–7 days, not to exceed 3 sprays.
• Deer prefer beet greens over almost any other vegetable. To prevent deer damage, build a temporary fence using 4-foot fiberglass posts and attach 1 clearly visible wire like IntelliTape™ at about knee height. Build a second fence inside the first fence, but attach 2 wires or twine whereby the top line is about 7-feet tall. Deer don’t have very good depth perception and won’t attempt to jump this fence without checking out the first fence, so electrifying the second fence is often not needed. Bait the outside deer fence with peanut butter, and electrify it. Make sure you build the fences, bait and electrify on the same day. The surprise effect is what matters most with this particular deer control. 

Other cultural practices

• You can plant beets over a wide range of the season. Early-bunching beets are one of the first crops to plant, while you shouldn’t plant storage beets until July to avoid oversized beets. For this reason, you can use a variety of cover crops before or after a beet crop.
• Irrigate frequently for optimum yield and plant health. Frequency depends on soil type, evaporation, precipitation and the particular needs of the crop. 

Double cropping and/or cover cropping

• You can plant a short-season vegetable crop like salad mix or arugula after early beets.
• For later dates, work under any harvest remains to avoid insect or pathogen buildup, and plant a cover crop. In the northern United States and Canada, you can follow summer- and early-fall-harvested beets with a cover crop of oats and peas in September, or rye and vetch planted at later dates. Adjust accordingly in other regions.

Harvest

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Ready-to-Harvest and quality indicators

• Beets are 2–3 inches in width.
• Beets are round and unblemished. 

Harvest procedures

• Leave beets that have any defects (e.g., black cavities due to boron deficiency) in the field.
• By hand:
  • Wash hands before harvesting.
  • Twist the leaves off beets and pack the beets into buckets.
  • Place full buckets next to the harvest lane.
  • If bulk harvesting in 20-bushel bins, drive by with the bulk bin on a tractor and carefully dump the beets into the bulk bin.
• With a carrot harvester:
  • Speeds of conveyors and components will vary a great deal with field conditions. There is no prescribed speed at which to set the flow controls. However, there is an approximate start-up setting, and the operator needs to adjust as needed for conditions.
  • Adjust the machine’s belt to the speed of the tractor and set the digging chisel to just below the roots.
  • Set the cutting height of beet tops at approximately 1–2 inches.
  • Most small carrot harvesters (that can also harvest beets) don’t allow for a sorting platform. Most likely you will need to do additional sorting for damaged beets in the packing shed before long-term storage. 

Washing and sorting procedures

• Wash hands and rinse boots before entering the wash-and-pack shed.
• Wash in a rinse conveyor washer, or use a brusher washer or barrel washer if the beets are very dirty. When using a rinse conveyor washer, add a sanitizer like hydrogen peroxide and peracetic acid to the water circulation tank.
• Sort by size and sort out culls at a well-lit sorting table.

Packing and storage summary for beets

Packing for delivery	Pack in 25 lb. plastic bags for wholesale. See the International Federation for Produce Standards for the correct PLU code. Add the prefix 9 for organic crops. Pack in any clean box of choice for CSA distribution or the farmers market
Storage	At 32°–41° and 95–100% humidity.

Harvest, Beets Bunching

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Ready-to-harvest and quality indicators

• Beets are 2–3 inches in width with healthy tops (e.g., unaffected by Cercospora).

Harvest and cleaning procedures

• Wash hands before harvesting beets.
• Harvest in the morning hours to avoid field heat accumulation.
• Select beets out of rows, clean off the dead leaves and make bunches out of 3–5 beets, weighing between 1–1 ¼ lbs. Make sure the tops of the beets are even with each other, and wrap the twist tie or rubber band around the stems just above the beets.
• Leave beets that have black cavities on the roots due to boron deficiency in the field. Remove any leaves with Cercospora (leaf blight) injury.
• Hold the twist tie in place and twist the bunch to tighten the twist tie. It is important to have a neat and tight bunch for washing and distribution. All bunches should be uniform in size.
• Leave bunches in the wheel-track, putting them into piles of 4 bunches each. This makes it easier to box the product based on counts of 16-, 20- or 24-bunches per box.
• Don’t bunch and count at the same time, as this can lead to mistakes in counting. Somebody should periodically pick up and box the piles to avoid overharvesting. 
• When bunching isn’t necessary, pull beets, and clean and pack them in a 1 ⅓-bushel box.

Washing procedures

• Wash hands and rinse boots before entering the wash-and-pack shed, and cover up field clothes with a bib. If a long-sleeve shirt contains soil, remove this as well.
• Lay beets out on a mesh table to spray them off by hand, or run them through a rinse conveyor washer. Regarding the last option, make sure you use the appropriate pressure on the nozzles to avoid damage to the leaves. Add a sanitizer like hydrogen peroxide and peracetic acid to the water in the circulation tank of the rinse conveyor vegetable washer. Some growers have connected a valve operated by a foot pedal to a stationary nozzle to free up a hand, which increases efficiency.

Additional resources

• U.S. Standards for Grading of Beets
• Production Guide for Storage of Organic Fruits and Vegetables

Packing and storage summary for bunching beets

Cleaning in the field	Pull off damaged or yellow leaves.
Packing in the field	Place bunches in multiples of 4 to facilitate transfer to boxes. Place beets into boxes in rows of 4 bunches, alternating the direction of each layer.
Packing for delivery	The boxes you use for delivery may be different than for field packing. The size depends on the customer, but wholesale is usually a 12- or 24-count in a 1 ⅑- or 1 ¾-bushel box. CSA delivery is often a 16-count in a 1 ⅓-bushel box. See the International Federation for Produce Standards for the correct PLU code. Add the prefix 9 for organic crops. Pack in any clean box of choice for CSA distribution or the farmers market
Storage	At 32°–41° and 95–100% humidity. Pack with ice in closed containers for storage longer than a week.

This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.