How To Store Beets Properly. Part 1

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Storing beets for summer residents usually does not cause serious troubles, since this underground beauty belongs to table root crops and is characterized by a much better keeping quality compared to potatoes and carrots. If you keep it properly, isolating it from diseased root crops, then it will not lose its taste and its presentation until spring. At the same time, it is important not only to correctly store the harvested crop, but also to harvest it correctly, and also properly prepare it for storage

Growing beets and harvesting them

It is important for all beet growers to know that good and strong root crops can usually be grown only on fertile soils - loamy or sandy loam. The underground beauty growing on acidic soils can easily be attacked by scab, as a result of which its skin will become rough and covered with numerous cracks and warts. And a little later, in the cracks, the development of all kinds of ailments can easily begin, adversely affecting the keeping quality of the cherished root crops.

Among the beet varieties with the highest keeping quality, some gardeners choose Nosovskaya flat, and others - Bordeaux 237. Red ball and Bravo are also considered excellent varieties. One-sprout, Incomparable, Podzimnyaya and some others are perfect.

When growing beets, it is advisable to give preference to varieties with medium-sized root crops - compared to large specimens, they are less fibrous, more tasty and much better stored. However, too small root crops should not be stored either.

As a rule, the beet harvest is harvested before the carrot harvest, since the ripe beets that find themselves on the soil surface are instantly frozen at the first frost.

Root crops during harvesting must be dug out as carefully as possible so that they do not receive mechanical damage that provokes the further development of numerous viral or fungal ailments.

Diseases that worsen keeping quality

If mechanical damage is received by the beets in the process of digging them up, or if they are frozen, then the development of gray rot may well begin on it.

The most susceptible to destructive white rot are specimens oversaturated with phosphorus or nitrogen. By the way, both gray and white rot are often brought into storage together with soil lumps sticking to the beets.

In the summer, beets are also attacked by fomoz or fusarium, which subsequently develop actively during their winter storage and provoke the formation of voids and black hard spots on the beets.

If the spring is wet enough and the summer is too dry, the soil may lack boron, which often leads to the development of heart rot. From the heads of the collected root crops, this attack gradually penetrates inside, forming numerous voids. Most often, beets attacked by this ailment rot at the initial stage of storage.

Preparing beets for storage

Experienced gardeners recommend scattering the harvested crop for a short time under the rays of the sun right on the beds, so that the roots dry out a little and it is easier to clean them of dried earth. In this regard, it is important to try to dig them out when the weather is cool and sufficiently dry. But in no case should you wash the beets.

The roots extracted from the soil are thoroughly sorted out, leaving only healthy beets for long-term storage, devoid of any signs of damage by various ailments and having no mechanical damage.

Beet tops are carefully trimmed with a sharp knife or scissors, leaving centimeter "hemp". Touching beet tails or picking beet leaves with your hands is strongly discouraged - the risk of damaging the juicy roots in this case is too great.

Then, the beets, cleared of tops and soil lumps and carefully sorted, are laid out in well-ventilated and dry rooms, protected from direct sunlight - in such conditions, the roots are dried completely for a week. And only then the beets are sent for storage.