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What is going on, everyone? This is the first time I am sharing my quick gardening tips podcast here on dsound - and I'm glad to be here!

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~ Kevin

Problems Growing Your Beets?

What's going on everyone! Welcome back to the Epic Gardening podcast. Today we are taking a question from Jon, who's got a rooftop garden up in Los Angeles, California.

In his bed garden, he is growing beets. He's wondering why his beets are deformed.

I don't know why I always chuckle when I hear the word deformed when it comes to a vegetable. I actually like a deformed vegetable. There are a lot of movements out there right now trying to sell ugly produce. I think that's fantastic, because a lot of these grocery stores are selling produce that looks only beautiful produce, when a slightly misshapen apple is just as tasty as a beautiful apple. But that's a story for another time.

His question is:

Why are my beet roots are too small are slightly deformed?!

This is a common question. It's a crop that we're growing for its root, and not for its top. A lot of the times you can't really see what's going on, especially if you've planted a lot of them. It's very easy to troubleshoot a plant that has maybe nitrogen deficiency, because you can see that in the leaves, right? Or, blossom end rot on tomatoes, because you can see that on the bottom of your tomato plant.

But when it comes to a root crop, sometimes it's hard to detect. What we'll do today then is go over a few of the reasons why beets might not be growing the way that you want them to grow.

Don't Plant Too Close Together

The first one is probably the most important. It's that beets are not a plant that enjoy intensive planting. You need to thin them to at least one inch apart, if not three inches apart. Your rows should be at least eight to twelve inches apart. If you have very leafy beet tops, and poor growth issues with the roots, a lot of the times that's because your beets are simply too close together. That's problem number one. Analyze how you're spacing those beets.

Lack of Proper Nutrients

Second problem could be a lack of nutrients. Namely phosphorus. Phosphorus is going to be one of the things that makes those beets bulb up and gives you a nice juicy beet root.

If you have soil that's really high in nitrogen, well yeah, you're going to have beet tops that look very luscious and green because as we know, nitrogen is essential in developing leaf structure, right? It's essential for other parts of the plant's life as well, but that's a core function of nitrogen.

But, if you add a little more phosphorus to the soil, you can add bone meal, although that does take a long time to break down. There's other sources of phosphorus we can talk about on another podcast. You can get larger root growth.

Maybe do a soil test and see, hey, how much phosphorus is in my soil? If there's not enough, maybe that's part of the reason why my beet roots aren't really forming up.

Are They Getting Enough Sun?

Here's another reason. Beet roots can become small or somewhat malformed if they don't get enough sun. They prefer full sun. They'll take partial shade, though.

This is why you don't want to overcrowd them, because if you overcrowd them, the leaves of one beet plant are going to be covering and blocking the ability for leaves of other beet plants to photosynthesize. Thus, that plant's not getting as much energy. It cannot put that energy into the beet root. You have the problem. You have that small or malformed beet root that you don't want to eat. You'd rather have a big bulbous beet that you can just munch on.

What's the pH of Your Soil?

Here's another problem you might run into. Beets prefer slightly acidic soil and not extremely acidic soil. What you should try to do is make sure that your soil PH is above 5.5. Ideally in that 6 to 7 range. On top of that, because it is a root crop, it wants a soil that does not have a lot of large pieces of debris in it. It likes a little bit of a sandier soil. It likes that soil to be lightweight. It likes that soil to drain very well.

Grow Bigger, Better Beets!

These are some of the problems you can run into with beets and beet roots. I'm sure that there are more intricacies that we could get in to, but if you don't take care of the basics, well, then the intricacies don't really matter. I hope that was helpful for Jon and anyone else who's out there trying to grow some beets and struggling right now.

Thanks For Reading!

If this is your first time reading my writing, thank you! Please leave a comment so I can get to know you better.

My name is Kevin and I run Epic Gardening, a website, podcast, and YouTube channel. My goal is to teach 10,000,000 people how to grow their own food.

I'm a big believer in Steemit and decentralized platforms, so I'm going all in on Steemit, dtube, and dsound. Be sure to check me out there too! You'll find me writing about gardening, travel, health, and philosophy - I can't seem to stick to one topic :P

Thanks and happy Steeming,

Kevin

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