Too Many Beetroot Varieties 

One interesting aspect of these videos is that Bruce gets ever more expert at how to run trials, and we learn about good trial design too.

Your video format and presentation are outstanding. You do it better than any of the other gardening channels in my opinion. I like many but you are by far my favorite. 👍

I grow cylindra and always been satisfied with that variety ,

I'd been told decades ago that the older the root the less tasty, and some go woody. I do wish to thank you for sharing your results from all of your tests, as my garden in little more than a postage stamp I can't do trials to find the quality information you share.

These comparison videos are SUPER interesting. Thank you 💕

I love beetroot leaves in my salad: they last comparatively longer in the fridge than the usual salad leaves, they are very tasty and rich in fibers which are a blessing for your gut health. They are also good if juiced with some sweet fruit.Thank you for your uploads!

Not a massive beetroot fan but I'm considering growing a few plants just for increased variety of food on the plot. Since I'll only grow 1, maybe 2 varieties this was a helpful comparison, cheers!

If you can get hold of the seads, moulin rouge is worth a try. A darker root that i have enjoyed greatly. I must say i am suprised with the golden beat as i have always found these so sweet and by far my favourite for roasting, with less of that 'earthy' flavour. Cylindra has also always been a favourite so im glad it has done well for you too, even if they were slightly too crooked 🙃

I just ordered chioggia beetroot seeds last week since they looked cool and were one of the only open pollinated varieties available on the website, I’m glad to see they were one of the stand out varieties you tested!

Thanks again for another great video, Bruce!

My beets grow huge. I love them. I boil them and they are easy to peel and cut.

Always really grateful for your variety trial videos! Thanks for sharing. 🙏

My favorite beet is Detroit Dark Red, its the sweetest in my opinion.

Love beets!

Good information thanks for sharing

🐝 Thanks for the great video 💚

My favorite beetroot is an open pollinated heirloom called "Flat of Egypt" it has a deep rich sweet beetroot flavor, short season, and productive. Occasionally we have trouble sourcing good seed, but next time we find good seed we will be saving seed this time.

I love your variety videos! Thank you so much! When it comes to beetroots, I tend to mix different seeds of different colored beets in a bag and just sow them all together. It makes for a nice variation of beets since I don't grow all that many (my family think they taste earthy and we don't eat a lot of them). Plus I figure, no matteer the soil or weather, one variety or the other will do good. :D

DETROIT DARK RED. Strong flavor and great leaf greens!

You must try apple, beet, ginger smoothie. about 1 beet, 1 apple, and a pealed 1/2 inch chunk of fresh ginger. 1 cup of water. if your blender can't handle it, leave out the ginger or you could strain the leftover ginger strands. So good, and the only reason I buy beet.

Thank you so much! This was so exciting to watch and I love learning from you! Always stuck with Cylindra but I will try the Chiogga now too for fun and taste.

Tip for those that dont know is that beets require a lot of boron in the soil they are bitter if they dont have boron its required in order for them to be sweet.

Excellent overviw

I watched this video carefully and took notes. Here in BC I've found Cylindra grows well and yields long, thick roots. I was surprised that Bruce didn't include the Beet Greens as part of his evaluation. For market gardeners, apparently beets are highly prized as a 2-for-1 crop as the roots can be sold separatly from the greens for additional profit. I wouldn't know, but I do know we have lots of beet greens in our freezers; certainly glad to have these in January!

I also have experienced the astringent taste! It's awful. I had it with chard as well. When I grew chard in another bed, the taste went away, supporting the idea that there's something in the soil that's causing it. I'm glad it's not just me. I've always had trouble growing beets (everything else went well, so I don't know what's up there). But not Choggia, that beet just keeps going. I even left it in the ground in autumn and it withstood slight freezing no problem. It didn't become woody at all. And it tastes like spring when sliced thinly in salads. By far my favourite. Boltardy is Dowding's go-to beet, so it's weird that it didn't do so well in the no-dig garden. He always sows them in clumps, perhaps that would make a difference? Keep up the variety trails Bruce, I love them! :)

Thank you for another great video.

Thank you for this video! I will say that golden beets are very good pickled!

Beets. One either loves them or hates them. ☺ Here in Canada, we have the stand by varieties like detroit dark red, bull's blood, cylindra, early wonder and ruby queen. That is with the main companies that stock local stores. Lots of heritage varieties to choose from besides that. I have to say that the Detroit dark red make the best pickled beets for me. My grandmother drilled it into me that you must pick the beets before they grow more than 7.5 cm/3", no matter what the variety. Anything bigger went to the animals she said. We jsut do batches of harvest, only pulling the largest ones and letting the others carry on until they get a little bigger. I have been growing golden beets and I don't let them get larger than 5 cm/2" because I find they have better flavour when a little smaller. They look like beautiful little golden apricots and have a lovely mild flavour that leans to the sweet side. I let them completely cool down and I think it helps balances out the taste of them. I also like to do the same with any little ones and use them on top of some sauteed beets greens. Very tasty. I also use my left over beet brine as salad dressing for salads. You can also stain boiled eggs for some lovely colour and flavour. Just over night will do. I have some little animals that like to feast on my beets so I have to keep an eye on them. That doesn't always work out. One year I went to pull some and they were all crescent moon shaped roots when I pulled them up. I trimmed the tops and they looked like screaming punk rockers with mo-hawks, haha. 😁 I did a rotation and applied some permaculture techniques since then and that solved most of that issue. I do think it would be worth it for you to try again but harvest continually so they don't get too large. It will actually increase your yields over all I think. Of course, you can still pull some little ones, etc. I think I will do a little trial myself and see what I may be missing out on. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and results so far. I find it all quite fascinating and informative. Makes me excited to start planning the gardens already. 😃

I usually just steam them & season with Red Pepper flakes or a few drops of balsamic or malt vinegar. Once thawed all that really needs to be done to them is “Heat ‘n eat!

I've found that the yellow ones and types like chioggia in particular require more water and earlier picking to get a sweeter flavour, but are useless when roasted. Great work Bruce.

Thank you for this. Boro is available from a supplier I am about to order from, so I may give it a try.

Thanks again for another great video. Its been a few years since I last grew beet root, but I've only grown maybe two of the long kind. The Forono and potentially some other that I cant remember starting the a "B". Those times I was quite satisfied with them, even the huge ones of 2 kg were not even woody. I also have bought some of the orange one you had the Burpees, but never grew it. And maybe I wont now :) I have planned to grow beet root again in 2024, as they are easy, they store fairly well and taste great roasted aswell as pickled.

I normally enjoy the flavour of the Touchstone golden beet, but last year’s seeds produced a notably weaker crop for me (smaller and blander). I have a serious leaf miner problem with all beets, and I suspect that is impacting the size of the beets as I rarely get large beets in an otherwise productive garden.

I just bought seeds of a variety called Red Mangel. It grows super huge but I think it was originally grown as animal fodder though reviews said it tasted great. We'll see.

At the market garden I work at the Boro F1 has been consistently good for several seasons now. Last year we lost some seedlings to drought so we ended up with loads of enormous beets, some of them more than 3 kg's a piece. This isn't uncommon for beets who get too much space but often they will be shaped weirdly. Not this season: they were round and smooth skinned and looked like beets are supposed to look. Overfeeding beets is the main reason beets will split or have rough skin. In our crop rotation it's the last crop before a cover crop (same goes for the carrots)

Great video Bruce! But the challenge is to get my wife to like beets 😂 Beets are very high up on most “survival crop” lists I see, presumably because of how easy they are to grow and how much calories they have in them compared to other options.

Thanks Bruce, another super interesting trial. We mainly grow detroit, boltardy and chiogia. Im never sure about non-red beetroot but ill have to try more chiogia raw. Borscht is a favorite use for us! I thought issues with bolting were supposed to be from early sowings, so boltardy often reccomended for them. When didnyou sow the polytunnel crop? Id also always assumed that the bad taste was from roots that were too old, will have to pay more attention! Ive also always wondered about storage beet as a forth crop on the simple garden. Do you think that would work? In 2021 we got away with leaving beetroot in the ground for overwinter harvest but then in 2022 warm autum followed by sudden low temperature caused a lot to to go bad, skin went soft and mouldy. So now we're lifting and storing in sand which is working well. Thanks as alway, Ben in Leeds

I've tried different varieties over the years (I love beets) and never noticed much difference in taste-root or leaf.

I always find these trial videos interesting this one equally so but perhaps for different reasons. I grow beets for the family as it’s a fairly staple crop here but as you mentioned I myself am one of those people who find the taste really earthy although I like the leaves and stems. I have tried various varieties over the years and rely on my wife’s and her mother’s feedback as to how they taste. Now what’s interesting is that the chigogia variety you stated as being really nice here they said it was not nice and yet the golden varieties you didn’t seem to enjoy the one I grew (goldeneye) here was a hit! I really enjoy growing them as they look really nice in the garden I just wish I enjoyed them more, they aren’t too bad pickled though. I grow Bona, De Egypt & Bolthardy. Thanks.

love your trials. how about a broccoli trial?

I was quite happy with the 'golden eye' variety from lidl, very sweet and very slightly earthy taste with good quality beets. Not sure if they are available over there.

Thanks so much for the video. I'm loving the trialling/testing chapters. I'm very surprised you did not like the taste of the yellow varieties because I found them really taste. I have no fancy seeds, I've been buying them from lidl for a few years. I think the variety is called golden burpee (not sure you trialed them) I also grow completely white beetroot with good results, though people say it is less healthy due to not having pigment.. it is less messy in the kitchen though. Like other people said in the comments maybe the bad taste on those varieties could have been diminished with younger roots?

It melts my brain when I hear people call it “beet root.” Do you say potato root, carrot root, turnip root, or parsnip root? No. I can’t get over it even though I know it’s asinine.

Some of the rot looks like boron deficiency, beet root requires a lot of boron. Hope this helps, love your videos!

hey, great video again. Do you have any recommendations for seed suppliers? Struggling to find a good variety from Irish suppliers, and UK suppliers are not an option any more. Are there good ones from other EU countries that are worth exploring?

I have been working on a cross of touchstone gold and Mulatka (red). We aim to breed a yellow beetroot with vigorous growth and a sweet non earthy flavour. We are just eating the first generation and we are really impressed so far. It's also great raw. Let me know if you would like to trial any seed.

Spread out germination is my biggest issue with beets. I used to have trouble with insects eating seedlings until I switched to transplanting them. I also used to have trouble with the leaves having dark spots until I increased the boron levels in my soil. I'm going to soak the seeds pods in a strong solution of potassium nitrate for half an hour before planting and see if that solves my germination issue. This has worked with other stubborn seeds.

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“Bulls Blood” beets are tasty. Almost like eating candy.

I'm not sure if this pertains to beets but seed producers hybridize for shelf life and tend to sacrifice flavor and nutritional value to that end.

I grew golden Boldor F1 this year and they tasted ok, didn't go woody so maybe one to try. I wonder what caused so much rot on yours, sounds obvious, but they didn't get touched by frost did they? I've noticed they're no good outside in Winter with a climate similar to yours, but worse. They're ok started in Aug then overwintered in the PT though, get a decent crop by early Summer perhaps and the leaves are in much better condition in there.

A really interesting discussion , please do another and discuss the flavour, sweetness in depth too. That's what we eat beetroot for. I love boiled beetroot with bechamel/white sauce but you have to eat it fast as the sauce goes lurid pink and looks disgusting. Tastes good though. Last year I grew detroit dark red and boltardy as recommended by Charles Dowding and was surprised when (for me) the detroit beet tasted better and sweeter than botardy by quite a lot. I would guess that beetroot flavours ae controlled by sugars? Fascinating topic , thank you.

Make a landrace Lofthouse style.

I'm curious if the bitter after taste is attributed to the nitrates and nitrites that are naturally abundant in beets. Perhaps certain conditions will cause the beets to store an excess causing the unpleasant taste. I'm interested to know if the plants grown outside are more likely to have this flavor than the ones grown in the more controlled environment of the poly tunnel. I'm not sure but it's a very intriguing topic. Great video

Hey Bruce which was your German supplier (am located in the Netherlands and bought from van der wall last year (2 orders) and hadn't recieved a complete order, so looking to check out other suppliers).

Another great informative video. Ive decided that im going to try out a wider range (12) of beetroot this season because I love picked beetroot also juiced. Ive never come across or even heard of that bad after taste. My dad had a few allotments from before I was born and him and my mother would make jars of pickles. They would pickle almost all of the vegetables he grew. Thank you for your channel, it's extremely useful and realistic.

My beet crop failed miserably this year. Actually, my beet ROOT crop failed. Plenty of greens, but tiniest of bulbs. I think it was a timing issue, as I got them into the garden too late. Not enough time for the bulbing out... before the Freeze.

I'm going to be growing sugar beets this year so that we can have our own homegrown sweetener. (Stevia is too bitter for me.) From what I know, it grows in the same conditions as other beets, as it's just a different breed of the same species.

Are you eating the bitter beetroot before it is ready to be eaten? Birdy

When you measure tbe mass of each variety, is that including the tops?

I don't eat beets cuz they taste like dirt, but thanks for sharing nonetheless.

Doesn't seem like a lot of greens for such big bulbs or corms or whatever its called. You would think something with that much energy reserve could easily take some regular leaf harvest for salad.

I wonder how much diversity there really is in beetroot, do the seed suppliers slap on their own names to seed that is pretty much the same as anyone else's? My experience with germination puts beetroot in with carrots, the germination rates are totally random! But I think that germination is better with very fresh/young seed compared to 1 or 2 year old seed.

My advice. forget everything else and just go with taste. Too many varieties are developed simply to trick us at the supermarket. Cool colorings, larger size etc. I don't grow beets to store, so that part of it doesn't even matter either.

Forino = Forono

The younger you harvest the better the taste. The woodiness and bitterness comes from the beet aging. Some people say, harvest as soon as they are goflball sized, that's a bit too small for my taste, but I will admit that any of my beets that were closer to tennis ball sizes, the more woody they became. So I aim for a size inbetween golf ball and tennis ball now.

I know this isn't a political channel but Brexit closed off access to so many good avenues for gardeners. Hopefully people start saving seeds.

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2:20 I asked Aria, the Opera browser's free built in AI chatbot, about the bitter aftertaste and this is what it said it can be down to: "Varietal Differences: Different varieties of beetroot can vary in their taste profiles. Some varieties may naturally have a slightly bitter undertone, especially if they are grown under certain conditions or harvested at specific stages of maturity. Growing Conditions: Environmental factors during the growth of the beetroot, such as soil quality, temperature, and sunlight exposure, can influence its flavor. Stressful growing conditions, such as inconsistent watering or excessive heat, may lead to the development of a bitter taste in the beetroot. Overmaturity: Beetroot that is allowed to remain in the ground for an extended period can become overmature, leading to a potential increase in bitter compounds. Harvesting beetroot at the appropriate stage of maturity can help avoid this issue. Storage Conditions: Improper storage of beetroot, particularly if it is kept for an extended period or exposed to unfavorable conditions such as high humidity or temperature fluctuations, can result in the development of off-flavors, including bitterness. Soil pH and Nutrient Imbalance: Soil pH and nutrient levels can impact the flavor of beetroot. An imbalance in soil pH or inadequate nutrient availability, particularly an excess of certain elements, can contribute to a bitter taste in the harvested crop. Cooking Method: The cooking method used for beetroot can also influence its taste. Overcooking or certain cooking techniques may intensify any existing bitterness in the vegetable." It's a pretty smart and is completely free, it has helped me a lot when trying to figure out what went wrong in my garden... :-/