Yellow beet

Harvest the roots before the first hard frost. Golden beetroot tolerates light frost around 0 °C, but does not survive lasting sub-zero temperatures outdoors. Store the harvested roots unwashed and without foliage in a box with lightly damp sand, cool, dark and frost-free (cellar or frost-free garage), and they will keep until spring.

You propagate golden beetroot exclusively from seed. Direct sowing outdoors is possible from mid-April, as soon as the soil is at least 7 to 8 °C, and goes on until early July. For an earlier harvest you can start it from late March in pots and set the young plants in the bed from late April. Then prick out early and carefully, so that the sensitive taproot is not damaged. Sow the seeds 2 to 3 cm deep with 25 to 30 cm between rows. Important: what looks like a “seed” is botanically a cluster of several seeds, and often 2 to 4 little plants germinate at one point at the same time. Thin early to 8 to 10 cm apart in the row, so that the roots develop well. Germination takes about 7 to 14 days at 13 to 20 °C. Keep the soil evenly moist until germination. The variety ‘Golden’ is open-pollinated: you can reproduce the variety true to type yourself. Note, however, that beetroot is biennial: it flowers only in the second year after a cold period. For this, leave a few healthy plants standing in the bed over winter (in harsh locations covered with leaves) or overwinter them frost-free and plant them out again in spring. Only then do flower heads form; harvest the seed after it ripens and store it dry.