Fall Beets

We just came in from planting a new bed in beets--3 heirloom varieties for late fall/early winter harvest.

We planted Chioggia (top photo), Bulls Blood (middle), and Detroit Dark Red (lower) beets in a raised bed amended with composted cow manure. We're hoping to harvest them before the ground freezes.

There's a lot of good info out there about fall gardening.

The image above of Chioggias is from a good article about Fall gardening in The Paper of Record, published a few years ago.

Here's some specific info on beets from Yardener:

"Beets will remain tasty and harvestable right up until the soil freezes hard which is usually 6 to 10 weeks after that first frost. Calculate when you think you will have the ground freezing hard, and back off 60 or 65 days for the date of the last fall succession planting of beets. Then move back another 3 weeks, and again another 3 weeks for the first planting of fall beets."

Beet greens are one of my staple foods. I also love raw grated beet roots as a topping for rice dishes and salads, and fermented beets are pretty fabulous too. Beets are an antioxidant-packed superfood; more here.

I cannot end this post any other way: the beet goes on.