Fresh garden beets!

[Skinny rooster]

Gardening in February???? Yes! I have made a break through on how to store beets. It's so simple but you can only do it on a small scale, still if you like fresh beets it's worth it. In the fall I have pails of carrots stored in my rootcellar . The trick of putting in some earth then carrots then earth then carrots and so on until the pail is full. After a day my beets were going soft as usual and I realized they need moisture. I stuck each beet into the damp earth of the pail and sure enough the roots took hold. They kept firm until I ate the last two today. The trick is when you pull them in the fall, don't break that long tap root, you need to stick that down into the pail. However do break off the stems and leaves. What I observed was that the beet didn't grow any bigger but the leaves did slowly grow back. The beet was like the day I pulled it out of the garden taste wise. Some still rotted away but not that many actually. Space is the problem, something to try again next year after my first experiment. Also I only stuck about one third of the bulb onto the soil but I made sure with my finger that the tap root went straight down like it would in the garden.

[KimChick]

Interesting! Where there's a will, there's a way!
My beets were roasted, then frozen; cooked, then frozen; and pickled.
The beet greens were frozen into "hockey puck" shapes with water squeezed out. Stems were processed separately to save for soups (or part of chicken treats).
I love beets! Makes me think it's time to make some borscht.

[tcamp]

Thanks for the tip! I tried beats last winter and stored them in shavings. They did dry out fast. The carrots did well in dampish shavings but tasted like trees after a bit :P Didn't have time to try again this year but in the fall i am going to do damp sand. I am not a fan of pickled beets, but roasting and freezing sounds good too!

[G Williams]

I know a guy who places straw on top of a row of carrots. In the winter he lifts the straw and digs the carrots as needed. The straw is recycled as mulch in the spring.
I wonder if that would work for beets?

[Skinny rooster]

QR_BBPOST Thanks for the tip! I tried beats last winter and stored them in shavings. They did dry out fast. The carrots did well in dampish shavings but tasted like trees after a bit :P Didn't have time to try again this year but in the fall i am going to do damp sand. I am not a fan of pickled beets, but roasting and freezing sounds good too!

Tcamp, the best thing for carrots that we have been doing for years is the pail method. If you have a cool storage area. Take a large pail, we use 5 gallon pails. Put in some sand, then some carrots, then sand then carrots and repeat until the pail is full. Don't use soft core types of carrots because they will go bad. The other thing we used to do was dig a hole, it should be fairly deep because of frost, and put the carrots in cover and take when needed. I stopped doing that because who wants to try to dig up carrots in January under ten feet of snow lol. I still do it if I have too many for the pails. The carrots will taste fresh. The pails give easy access all year.

[Skinny rooster]

QR_BBPOST I know a guy who places straw on top of a row of carrots. In the winter he lifts the straw and digs the carrots as needed. The straw is recycled as mulch in the spring.
I wonder if that would work for beets?

G, I think digging a hole would be better for the carrots, if the winter was really cold, I think the carrots would be damaged but I have never tried that and now I want to just for the experiment. I want to try it for beets also but beets are wimpy compared to carrots. Beets tend to sit on top of the ground so they would need to be covered with earth and the other problem is voles love beets and not carrots so much. So I think a person would be asking for trouble if they gave voles a straw bed with delicious beets inside. Still something to try and I think a person could probably get away with doing that with beets at least until Christmas, so that would be a bonus. Thanks for the suggestion.

[tcamp]

QR_BBPOST

QR_BBPOST Thanks for the tip! I tried beats last winter and stored them in shavings. They did dry out fast. The carrots did well in dampish shavings but tasted like trees after a bit :P Didn't have time to try again this year but in the fall i am going to do damp sand. I am not a fan of pickled beets, but roasting and freezing sounds good too!

Tcamp, the best thing for carrots that we have been doing for years is the pail method. If you have a cool storage area. Take a large pail, we use 5 gallon pails. Put in some sand, then some carrots, then sand then carrots and repeat until the pail is full. Don't use soft core types of carrots because they will go bad. The other thing we used to do was dig a hole, it should be fairly deep because of frost, and put the carrots in cover and take when needed. I stopped doing that because who wants to try to dig up carrots in January under ten feet of snow lol. I still do it if I have too many for the pails. The carrots will taste fresh. The pails give easy access all year.

Do you dampen the sand in the pails? Do you put a lid on them? I do have a cold room that stays just above 0 with a 50% humidity that I have always kept canned goods and dry goods in, but really want to try fresh produce. I have kept grocery store root vegetables in there for a couple of months at a time and it seems to work well enough but they must be taken out of the plastic bags. I have a lot to learn about cold storage, lol! I am definitely going to try the carrots in sand buckets for now though! Not sure what you mean by soft core carrots. Thanks for the info!

[Skinny rooster]

QR_BBPOST

QR_BBPOST

QR_BBPOST Thanks for the tip! I tried beats last winter and stored them in shavings. They did dry out fast. The carrots did well in dampish shavings but tasted like trees after a bit :P Didn't have time to try again this year but in the fall i am going to do damp sand. I am not a fan of pickled beets, but roasting and freezing sounds good too!

Tcamp, the best thing for carrots that we have been doing for years is the pail method. If you have a cool storage area. Take a large pail, we use 5 gallon pails. Put in some sand, then some carrots, then sand then carrots and repeat until the pail is full. Don't use soft core types of carrots because they will go bad. The other thing we used to do was dig a hole, it should be fairly deep because of frost, and put the carrots in cover and take when needed. I stopped doing that because who wants to try to dig up carrots in January under ten feet of snow lol. I still do it if I have too many for the pails. The carrots will taste fresh. The pails give easy access all year.

Do you dampen the sand in the pails? Do you put a lid on them? I do have a cold room that stays just above 0 with a 50% humidity that I have always kept canned goods and dry goods in, but really want to try fresh produce. I have kept grocery store root vegetables in there for a couple of months at a time and it seems to work well enough but they must be taken out of the plastic bags. I have a lot to learn about cold storage, lol! I am definitely going to try the carrots in sand buckets for now though! Not sure what you mean by soft core carrots. Thanks for the info!

I don't dampen the sand, you could maybe encourage rotting or mold if you did that. I use the soil/sand from the garden so it is already naturally moist. I never put a lid on the pail, probably not a good idea to do that. You will learn what works best for you over time but it's easy. Your cold area sounds just like mine. When you buy carrot seeds, check the package, it might say soft core or coreless, those carrots taste great to eat in the summer but they don't store well. I find they start to go rotten or turn to complete mush. Even the ones that don't start rotting taste "off" so now I try to get the regular type or heritage types.