Beets
Beets have always been a favorite vegetable of mine. Incorporating naturally sweet foods such as beets and carrots into your diet, actually helps to satisfy sugar cravings so that you’re not running after refined sugar-laden foods.
How to Grow - Our farm is located in Connecticut so we are able to start directly seeding beets into the ground on April 1st and then in June, we begin to harvest. You can keep planting beets all the way until August 15th in our area. This ensures that you’ll be able to harvest right through fall. If you would rather purchase the plants, you can transplant in May. We do a little of both and have had great results with both direct seeding and transplanting.
Beets always need thinning, even when you plant the seeds with the proper spacing for growth. The reason being, they grow from compound seeds that produce several plants all in one seed. If you don’t thin them, you’ll end up with no root which is the beet. And while beet tops or greens are nutrient dense and wonderful to eat, it’s also nice to grow the actual vegetable itself!
We order all of our seeds from Johnny’s Seeds. For red beets, we like Boro. Touchstone Gold is a gorgeous and sweet tasting golden beet, and Chioggia is a beautiful stripped beet. Each variety has its own flavor, all of them delicious.
How to Prepare - Roasted or raw, beets are a wonderful addition to any salad. When eating them raw, I find that grating them or using a food processor with the shredding attachment works well. Personally, I find roasted beets to have the sweetest flavor and best texture. An easy way to roast is by simply peeling, slicing, and tossing in a baking dish with olive oil and vinegar. Cover with foil and let cook for about 30 minutes in a 375 degree oven.
Roasted beets also freeze well. I’ll freeze them throughout the summer and fall so that I have a vegetable to accompany our dinners when we are traveling in our van.
Why & When to Eat - Ayurveda classifies our food into five tastes. Beets fall into the category of the sweet tasting foods and are characterized by the elements of earth and water. Because of this, beets are grounding, nourishing, and immune system building. Beets are a good source of iron and are known for being blood builders.
Beets are also cleansing. Ayurveda recommends cleansing twice a year - in the spring and in the fall. Beets support our body’s ability to cleanse our lymphatic system and our liver.
