5 Signs Your Beets are Ready to Harvest
Beets fill garden beds with strappy green leaves and bulbous orange and red beetroots. When is the best time to harvest them? Let’s dive underground to see what types of beets exist and how they ripen. Join seasoned gardener Jerad Bryant in discovering these five signs your beets are ready for harvesting.
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Beets, both table and sugar types, ripen from spring through summer. They send up long, green leaves with colorful stems. The leaves collect energy from the sun through photosynthesis, and they send that energy to their roots. This is what makes beetroots swell into the vegetables we know and love.
You may wonder if your crop is too small or big to harvest, and how to tell when it’s ready. These roots grow woody and fibrous if they get too big, and picking them at the proper time is crucial for preventing less-than-desirable harvests. Know when to get them out of the soil, and you’ll never have a beet-growing issue again.
Whether you live in southern regions or cooler northern ones, there are telltale signals that our vegetables give when they’re ready for picking. Look closely at your garden, your plants, and how they grow, and you’ll know when to harvest beets at peak flavor and texture!
Gourmet Blend Beet Seeds
‘Gourmet Blend’ includes ‘Detroit Dark Red’ with deep red roots and delicious dark green tops, ‘Chioggia’ with interior rings of bright pink and white, and ‘Golden’ with bright yellow flesh.
Types of Beets
Two types of beets excel in home gardens: table and sugar beets. Table types are perfect for eating whole, grating fresh in salads, and for use in cooking recipes. Sugar types are the ones farmers grow for processing into table sugar.
Both types work well in home gardens. Grow them in raised beds, containers, or the ground. They need pots at least eight inches deep to form bulbous, swollen roots. Sugar varieties are exceptionally sweet and bland, unlike their table beet relatives. You may try them at home to see if you like them or grow them to process into sugar.
For a unique beetroot with candy stripes of white and red, try ‘Chioggia.’ It’s a delicious table beet with superb flavor and tasty greens. If you’d like to try red, gold, and striped types, there’s a seed mix with all three. Plant ‘Gourmet Blend’ beet seeds, and you won’t have to decide on one variety!
Harvest and Storage
When they’re ready to harvest, you can uproot ripe beets with your hands or a digging fork. You want to lift them without harming their juicy roots. Lift up and out, grasping them by the bottom of their stems with your hands.
The process is a bit different with a potato fork. You’ll want to stab the ground low enough so that it doesn’t pierce the beets. Lift the fork, and it’ll loosen the beetroots from the ground as you pull upwards. Grab your beetroots and prepare them for processing!
You’ll want to chop the leaves off the roots, leaving two inches of their stems attached. They will send moisture and energy from their roots to the leaves in storage, and they’ll turn wrinkly, soft, and bland-tasting. Prevent this by removing the leaves, then store them in a glass of water in your refrigerator.
Wash the roots so they’re free of dirt, being careful not to break or damage their skins. Let them dry, then store them in your fridge for a week or longer. Beets also last long in root cellars with dry, dark conditions.
5 Signs Beets Are Ready to Harvest
Your crop will make it clear when it’s ready for picking. Their roots swell, they produce dozens of leaves, and they push themselves up. These are five signs your beets are ready to harvest.
Seedlings Crowd Each Other
The first beet harvest occurs earlier than you’d think! Beet seeds clump together in clusters. When you sow them, they sprout multiple plants in the same location. You’ll want to thin these extra seedlings, leaving one remaining to form a thick root.
Use harvested seedlings in salads, charcuterie boards, or cooked greens recipes. Some may have small beetroots already forming. Because they’re so small, they’re edible fresh, and cooked in your favorite dishes. They taste milder than the rich, juicy, and fully inflated roots.
Nowadays, some seed companies mechanically separate the clusters so that each seed stands on its own. You won’t have to thin seedlings with these mixes since you can plant them with the correct spacing when you sow seeds.
There’s A Lot of Leaves
Beets use their bright green leaves to collect energy and swell their roots. Healthy plants have many leaves that stand tall under the summer sun. Outer leaves may fall as the plant sucks in energy from them, although the inner new ones will stay perky and upright throughout the growing season.
Sugar varieties grow particularly large bunches of foliage, with some plants hiding under dozens of strappy leaves! Their leaves are green and wide with white or green stems. Both sugar and table beet foliage are edible throughout your crop’s lifetime.
Pick outer leaves that are green and perky, then use them as you would spinach or Swiss chard. Avoid harvesting more than a third of a single beet’s leaves at one time to avoid shocking it. When you take less than a third of their foliage, you let them continue to grow thick roots without any hiccups.
Roots Are Swelling
Most beets are ready for harvesting when they reach one and three inches in diameter. They have the best texture, flavor, and storage capabilities when they’re this size. When the roots swell larger than three inches they sometimes grow woody, pithy, and difficult to eat.
Some varieties swell past three inches without their roots becoming low quality. ‘Detroit Dark Red’ is one example you can plant and let grow until it’s gigantic! If the roots are lower quality or pithy, use them in canning or pickling recipes. The cooking process softens them for easy eating.
The smaller the beetroots are, the more tender and soft they are, making them ideal for cooking or canning whole. Large roots are sweeter than smaller ones, although they have a chance of growing woody. Try your harvest at different ripening stages to see which is your favorite.
They Push Out of the Ground
As beets swell larger and bulbous, they push themselves out of the soil. The top of their root will stick out with foliage sprouting from it. Fear not if your beets push out of the soil, as they’re nearing the perfect size for harvesting.
Sometimes beetroots grow above the soil if the conditions are less than desirable for optimal root growth. Soils low in nutrients and excessively warm areas can cause this deformity. Harvest oddly shapen roots, and amend your garden with loose, crumbly soil for better results in the future.
If your beets have soil covering their tops, you may brush some aside to see how thick they are. Use your hands to brush some dirt away with care not to harm your crop’s skin. Place the soil back onto the beet if it’s not ready, and check it again in a week. With continuous inspections, you’ll catch every mature beet at peak ripeness.
Hard Frosts are Approaching
Freezing temperatures can help or hinder your swelling crops. A few light frosts are okay, as they help beets sweeten their flavor in response to the cold. So long as the freezes are for a few hours and temperatures hover between 28-32°F (-2-0°C), your beets will stay hardy amidst winter chill.
It’s good to start thinking about harvesting your beets if frosts of any kind approach in your local weather forecast. Light and hard frosts kill the leafy greens, turning them into mushy, brown messes. Slice the greens before freezing temperatures arrive so you can use them in the kitchen while they’re still fresh.
Hard frosts below 28°F (-2°C) threaten both the beetroots and their leaves. Harvest any prospective roots before these weather events arrive to keep your crops healthy, sweet-tasting, and long-lasting. Mild winter areas without frost are the exception; they will continue growing if frosts are absent. If you live in a frost-free area, use the mature beet root size as the primary indicator that they are ready to harvest.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is best to harvest beetroots?
Beetroots take between 50 to 60 days on average to mature from seed. Some varieties, like ‘Detroit Dark Red,’ take more than 60 days to mature. It’s best to harvest your beets when their roots are between one and three inches in diameter, around 60 days after planting.
How do you harvest beet leaves?
Cut the leaves like you would spinach! Simply slice off the outer leaves that are still green and perky. Leave two-thirds of the leaves alone so your plant has enough energy to form a bulbous root.
How do you harvest beet seeds?
Beet seeds are challenging to harvest! Let your plants live for longer than a year. They’ll flower in their second year and produce seeds. Collect seeds when they’re brown, dry, and hard. They’ll keep for a year or longer in a cool and dark location.
