Beetroot is pre-cultivated

Beetroot is pre-cultivated

Peter Norris

March 6, 2016

Beetroot seeds are actually small keys consisting of several seeds, which can each develop into a plant - unless they are seeds of F1 varieties, which only give a single beetroot plant. This means that it is often annoyingly necessary to thin out when sowing directly in the open air, as otherwise the plants will be too close.

Among other things. therefore, it may be beneficial to pre-cultivate the beets in the plug box. Furthermore, there is the benefit that you can both get an earlier harvest, and also have small plants ready to plant as a late 2nd crop.

Here it is the variety Bitola, which is a flat round type which is suitable for early sowing. They tend to be planted under plastic in late March, and have always coped with the frost that has come without any cane run.

The individual plugs are planted out as they are, just with a distance between corresponding to the number of plants in the plug: if there are eg 4 plants, they are put 20-25 cm apart in the row. When they then grow to, they just push to each other and give a nice size. No thinning!

Something else is that I have not previously registered how many plants a single beetroot key gives. Here I have sown 2 keys per. cell, and the result is 2-4 sprouts - no higher.