 We'll have a lovely one and welcome to another complete growing guide here on the Am I Gardner channel. I know you are going to love this one because it's on beats. First let me first start off by saying I am so sorry that I have not been the beat growing guide. We've had so many people messaging us saying Luke, where is the beat growing guide? Why? Okay, check our complete growing guide list. And I don't know, I don't know why I never did a beat growing guide but I am really sorry because there are a ton of people waiting for us to do the beat growing guide to kind of show them, kind of illuminate the path, not at grow beats. And I never had one. I could have sworn I had one so my apologies to all of you that were waiting but this is going to be a complete growing guide on beats. So now if it's too late for you to start beats this year at least you got the information for next year. And one of the things that is fun about beats starting off is that like I said if there's not enough time this year there's time next year and if there's time next year there's time in the spring, summer and fall next year. Beats are something that can be grown all season long at numerous different stages and when succession planted that means planting about every week to two weeks apart you can have a harvest all season long of beats. Beats are so fun to grow because they are hot, they're very heat tolerant, they're very cold tolerant and they really do grow in almost any weather. At least here in Michigan if they get above 100 degrees they do struggle and some will go to flower and they won't form as nice of a root. But unfortunately that's kind of the nature of the beast when growing in hot weather is that a lot of your root crops like radishes and turnups and beats they don't get as large because they are so stressed from the heat that they tend to just flower or focus a lot of their growth and flowering. But if you're in a place like Michigan you can grow all season long. It's an incredible, incredible crop to grow. So let's get right into it. Let's jump on into it here. Beats. Beats are an awesome crop if you have not perfect soil. A lot of times people say what type of soil do I need? Well, beats will grow in almost any type of soil but having the right type of soil will help you get nicer beats. Beats will grow in harder clay soil and in fact a lot of farmers will grow beats as a kind of a cover crop or a, I guess not really a cover crop but a secondary crop to help loosen the soil, aerate the soil and they'll still be able to harvest it and make some money on their efforts. So beats will grow in harder clay soil for that reason. They'll help aerate that soil up in heavier clay soil but obviously having really loose soils is going to do a couple things. It's going to help with root development which is obviously really important. Root development is great if you want to get the tap root nice far down in the soil, help it to stay really healthy, drought tolerant and things like that. But also what it'll help you do is it helps you keep uniform shape. Oftentimes we get pictures of people where their beats are taller than they are wide and they're all crazy shaped and things like that. As because they're having a hard time because the soil is pressing in around the beat and instead of allowing the beat to grow out, it's kind of forcing the beat to grow up the path of least resistance. And so if your soil is very loose and very fluffy, it's going to not have any resistance and it's really going to be able to do a thing. Now what we've gone and done is I've taken about a one inch layer of compost from our compost pile and I've put some of that on. That's always a good practice especially if it's your second crop. Even if it's your first crop, it's good to, in the spring, it's good to remineralize the soil, things like that. So any time we're planting beats, we're always starting with a fresh slate because this is going to help loosen that soil. It's going to help keep things really loose, give it a lot of organic matter, a lot of water holding capabilities, things that are really, really important to beat that we'll get into. Another thing that it does is what it really does best is it will provide lots of nitrogen. And one of the things that I see most people not doing well enough when growing beats is providing enough nitrogen. I've always said, my beats, they didn't do anything other than grow really awesome leaves. That's because you don't have enough nitrogen. Beats are one of the only crops that I know of that take so much, they require a certain amount of nitrogen to begin setting root development. And I don't mean phosphorus. Often dions gardeners will load on the phosphorus saying phosphorus is really good for root development. And I want bigger roots being bigger beats. I'm going to give them lots of phosphorus. You do not need a lot of phosphorus to grow beats. You don't even need really a lot of potassium to grow beats. You need to focus on the nitrogen because if you have enough nitrogen in the soil, the plant is going to grow up in its leaves first and the excess energy is then taken back down to form a larger beat. And so it needs a lot of upper leaf growth to create the photosynthesis from the sun that then comes back down and stories into the beat itself. If you don't have enough nitrogen, it's going to just form enough leaves to kind of survive and it's not going to focus any energy into the root and you'll find that your roots are very woody. We see so many times people are like, I harvested my beats but I won't broke a tooth biting into them because they're so hard. That's the problem. That's the problem. If they just become really woody and you'll notice that the beat actually will look kind of woody on the outside. It'll look kind of like a, almost like a pepper stammer or something. It's just super gnarly and woody instead of really tender and soft with a very gentle skin and a nice shape. And so that's what nitrogen is going to give you. Also what we've gone and done is we've sprinkled about a cup over top of this. Maybe 10 square feet or so. So we sprinkled about a cup of trifecta over top of this, maybe 9, 12 square feet. That is going to give you additional nitrogen, additional phosphorus and additional potassium as well as trace minerals and things like that, which are really important to growing beats. The next thing is sunlight. Before we get into the actual planting of the beats which I am using seeds, I understand people don't love that because it's not a fully mature plant to say, oh he knows what he's talking about. It's because I didn't realize I hadn't done a beat growing guide. Take it easy on me. But the next thing obviously is sunlight. Sunlight is so important for beats. You can't give them four hours. You can't give them five hours. They need full sun. If you're growing them for the roots or the shoots or the flowers or the fruits, they need five to eight hours of sun. If you're just growing them for like leaves and you don't care about the beats, I guess you could probably get away with around four hours or so because the leaves are edible and they're very delicious. But we want the nice big roots there so we can enjoy those and those require lots of sunlight. Again, it goes back to what I stated with the nitrogen aspect is it got to have lots of energy to form those big bulbous roots and that's that photosynthesis that is created from the sun. So you need lots of nitrogen to create lots of leaves but if there's lots of leaves and no sun, the two go hand in hand so you got to have lots of that. Now the final thing before I get into planting them and spacing them and things like that is you really need to make sure you water frequently. So again, with the compost, it goes hand in hand, a lot of stuff that we do here goes hand in hand. The compost helps loosen the soil, helps aerate the soil and it gives it lots of nitrogen but also what it does is it holds water, having that humus, having the rich, beautiful organic matter. I'll show you close of what our soil looks like so you have an idea of what yours should look like as well if you want beats like what we get which are like the size of apples, they're huge beats. So what you really need to do is make sure they have lots of moisture because what will happen is if your beats dry out either they will not form a bulb at all because they're just trying to survive so they really go into flowering and things like that or what they'll do is their beats will be very, very, very tough. Again, that's another reason why beats just they don't form a nice tender bulb, they get really woody and that's because there's not enough water in the soil. Another thing too is if your beats dry out, go bone dry, oftentimes it will happen is even if you have a really nice size beat, it will crack so many times even for us we've had beats crack because the soil dries out and then the bulb itself shrinks too fast and it can't keep up and then if it gets rewatered again or something like that it will split much like a tomato will or things like that that the skin can't expand and contract fast enough with the shrinking or expanding of the fruit itself. No I understand that beats are not fruit but it's still the same concept so if you want to prevent the cracking as well keep even soil moisture, I cannot stress that enough. Alright so first I want to show you what our soil looks like here, check this out. It is so awesome. Our soil has little chunks of little bits of humus punky wood, it's got organic matter it's already broken down, it's got little twigs and little bits of sand and kind of little bit of pebbles and things like that. This is all makes a very good rich growing medium that holds water, holds on to air, it gives places for fungus and animals to call home, bacteria will thrive and notice no matter how much I crunch it together it just still breaks apart that is incredible soil structure right there. That is probably some of the best soil we've ever had in fact. And so what you want to do when you're planting beats, now I do usually have the so perfect cedar with me which we have videos on that in the past if you don't know what I'm talking about but I actually left that up at the cottage so we were planting up there and I accidentally forgot it. So unfortunately I've got to use my hands for this one but what you want to do is you want to plant two seeds about every three to four inches apart. I prefer, I mean I always, I have all done it long enough but yes about three inches there. So about three inches for like a high density planting but if you're looking for, if you're looking for a little bit bigger bulbs and not as much competition or maybe you're looking at stretching your, maybe you're looking at stretching your seeds out. You can go, you can go four inches with your spacing and be perfectly fine. But the reason why I'm planting two seeds and not one seed like this, I've stopped doing this. See here is a very poor method of spacing because you'll notice let's say one doesn't sprout right. Let's say this one doesn't sprout, what happens is you still are too close here and then you're going to be taking this one out and then you're way too far apart and that's why I'd rather thin a seedling than to have my spacing all whacked up and you know have to go back and in your, well you're losing a lot of your productivity from your bed. So that's why I've started planting just two seeds in one hole that we have one doesn't sprout, well that's fine you don't have to go back and thin that spot but it's a lot more effective at getting the amount of plants that you need in a given space. As far as soil pH goes, I never worry about when I'm planting beets what my soil pH is because I don't do anything with it, I just use pure compost and pure compost is a natural pH buffer of seven so assuming you're planting in pure compost don't worry about it if you're planting in like clay soil or something like that I'd recommend maybe getting a pH test the reason why I know my plants are going to do well is because my pH is seven but beets really don't like a pH of any lower than 5.5 and they don't like any higher than around a pH of eight. So there's your complete growing guide on how to grow beets. Now I do know that these are not fully mature plants behind me there's just seeds. If you want to see what they look like when they're fully mature go check out our beet harvest video I'll post a link to it in the description box below because that'll show you that the methods and what I'm talking about here really do work if you apply them to your garden. So I do hope you enjoyed I hope you learned something new do recommend giving this video a thumbs up and sharing it with your friends if you are so inclined to do so but I would appreciate it and it really does help this channel grow. So as always this is Luke from the MIGarner channel reminding you to grow big or go home and catch you all later. See ya. Bye.