This is from www.farminfo.com Beets prefer loose, well-drained soils but will tolerate a wide range. Remove stones and debris since this will hinder growth. In high clay soils, add organic matter to improve soil structure and to help avoid crusting after rainfall. Beets also make an excellent raised bed crop since soils are generally less compacted and there is less foot traffic. Beets are also sensitive to soil acidity. A low soil pH results in stunted growth. They prefer a pH of 6.2 to 6.8 and will tolerate 6.0 to 7.5. John Here is a link that might be useful: Johns Journal

Well, I kinda like the "Lots of Love" idea. Heh. That year I had such great success with my candy onions -- actually great success with ANY onion -- I did something that I don't know if it helped or not. I soaked them in Jerry Baker's "Root Revival Tonic": 1 tbsp of mild dish soap, 1/4 cup of strong tea and 1 tbsp epsom salt, mixed well into 1 gallon of water. This is from his book, "Old-Time Gardening Wisdom". I had used it to soak some bushes I was planting and instructions said up to 24 hours. I didn't soak the onions in it but about an hour. They made the water really "onioney" and I was worried I'd made a big mistake. But I set them out right away and those were the best and biggest onions I'd ever grown. I also didn't set them out till April 15, the approximate date of our last frost. We got a frost after that and I went out and covered them all. What concerns me is that sometimes the frost will cause the onions to think they've had another winter, and that triggers bolting to seed. Last year, I didn't soak the onions. I put the ones I got from Dawn out immediately, which was sometime in early March, I think. And then I planted Southern Belle Red later on. Of course it was a weird year and so hard to judge because of that. Got some decent-sized onions from Dawn's plants, but nothing like the previous year, others stayed small and a few of them went to seed. The Southern Belles that were planted later didn't bolt to seed but they didn't grow any, either. I dug them back up and will be planting them around April 15 to see if they'll go ahead and do anything. This year, whatever I end up getting, I'm going to try the soak again, and wait till April 15. I know this goes against standard practice, but it did work for me that one year. Maybe I was just having "Dumb cluck luck". We'll see what happens.

Bre. You know, you are not a beet failure. Maybe the beets have failed to germinate as desired or to grow as well as you expected, but it is the beets that are failing, not Bre. The main issue with getting a good harvest from any cool-season crop in the spring in OK results from planting too late. We have a very tiny window of opportunity when the temperatures are cool enough for the plants to perform their best. That means that if anything happens, like if you start late or if they germinate slowly, it can be hard to get a good crop because we often go from too cold one week to too hot the next week. I usually have happier beets with less trouble in fall than in spring. I think that beets germinate a lot better in warmer soil, but grow better in cooler soil, making them more suited to our fall weather than our spring weather when the soil often warms up incredibly quickly. Since yours germinated and are growing, i second Scott's recommendation that you just water them and keep them growing actively. Be sure you do thin them properly. I try to remember to thin them as soon as they have one or two true leaves and are still really short--like only an inch or two tall. Beets like really fertile soil and can be helped along with a feeding of fertilizer when they reach 5 or 6" in height. They enjoy plentiful moisture as long as they are in well-draining soil. With beets (as with many other root crops), if you let the soil get too dry or if you let the soil moisture level fluctuate between being too wet and too dry, the beets can become cracked or misshapen. Aim for keeping the soil constantly moist, and mulch it to help keep the soil from drying out. I've noticed this week that the parts of the garden I haven't managed to get mulched this week have soil that is blazing hot in the afternoons. There could be a very slim chance that there is a nutrient issue because beets can just sit there and not grow at all if their soil is deficient in boron, though I've never heard of that being an issue in OK soils. Boron deficiency would be most likely on the more alkaline soils of western OK than anywhere else in the state where the soils more often range from neutral to acidic. How will you know if the beets are growing in boron-deficient soil? When you pull the beets at harvest time, they'll have areas with black tissue. It may have a texture that is sort of like cork. Other reasons that beets might stall and just sit there and not grow would be that your soil might be too acidic for them or that your soil is nematode infested. If you have nematodes, you'll know when you harvest the beets because the roots will have little knots or nodules on the hair roots that extend from the fleshy beets. To plant beets in fall, I usually soak the seed in water overnight before planting. This helps them germinate really quickly. In fall or late summer, beet seeds often germinate in about a third of the time it takes them to germinate in colder soil in mid-winter or earlier spring. As an aside, it is a whole lot more comfortable to be in the kitchen canning in cooler fall weather than in the summer months. Dawn

Oh, Annie, you teach me more daily. The bunches of smaller beats with the pretty leaves have always looked more appealing to me but I never thought about the whole freshness issue, though I'm well aware that roots hold well and aren't always right out of the ground, etc. That explains so much! If they have perky leaves and stems, they're fresh and freshly pulled means tender and not dry. Cool. Bbstx, your initial description didn't appeal, really. I'm not a fan of borscht, but the recipe in full sounds good. I got hung up on "core fennel". I finally figured out it meant cut out the rooty center on the bottom, as usual, right? So glad to hear that things are getting better there and you got a day off! And so sorry to hear how far WF is from you! My friend who used to live in the hinterlands (not quite the edge of the world) of Texas was "only" an hour from the good WF, and they opened an okay one half way there. Plus, Texas has good produce and is near enough to so much Mexican export. Sigh. I think it's so odd that there's less the closer you get to where the food is grown (i.e., not in the paved over city). I've seen that kind of sweet potato too. :) Thanks for the picture. :)