Beetroot

laurel7172

Last year I planted some Boltardy ( and some turnips) in a raised bed and in a pot, but though I had a healthy crop of leaves, and left them in the ground a long time, I never got any roots from either of them.

Any ideas what went wrong, please???

Lotus-eater

Too close to each other, not enough water, not enough nutrients, not the right amount of sun.
Something like that.

WestonDave

Slugs will eat the roots on them, but I'd expect that would be obvious to you from the chewed appearance! Not strictly relevant to your problem, but if you have sparrows about, cover seed beds with netting as they'll happily strip the lot as they germinate!

foxgloves

If the roots just haven't swollen, that's usually a problem with not enough water. I grew Boltardy along the side of a raised bed last year and although they all got big enough for me to pickle as baby beet, none of them would get any bigger than that. They just got to this tiny little golfball size then stopped and simply refused to grow any bigger! Tasted good though.

realfood

Watering is frequently a problem with raised beds.

ALIBOBSY

Some people (me included the first time we grew beets) assume that the large beet seeds in the packet are single seeds, but they are in fact clusters of seeds. This means that no matter how thinly sown you will need to thin them out to give space to grow the roots. Use the thinings for the leaves for salads yummy.
Mind you we still can't get them really big, but the small ones are nicer anyway-just plant more and keep sowing over time to get a spread of supply.

ali x