I also had fairly small beets & carrots this year. I am blaming it on the cooler temps and bucket fulls of rain my area has had. I planted more beets & carrots a few weeks ago and with the aid of row cover I am hope on a better crop this fall.

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Hi,

I am also in Pennsylvania. I managed one meal with roasted beets as a side dish and ONE JAR (only one!) of pickled beets - my 16 year old loves them, and yes it was more work than it was worth (could have bought them in the store). My point...my beets were VERY SMALL this year. Only now - September 6 - do I finally have room to plant more, but I think it's too late. Thoughts? If I get them in tomorrow (now that Hurricane Hanna has passed) and plan to cover them with some sort of cold frame set up, will I have beets? Obviously, my family likes them...so if the concensus thinks I can get a crop, I'll go plant tomorrow.

Thanks in advance,

Pam in Havertown

OH...PS...my carrots were horribly small as well. I checked one or two in early July...have not touched them since and they look like they are bigger...but am not touching them until mid-September (greens still nice and green and bright). I think I planted mine too close, though. this was not the case with the beets....they were thinned nicely.

I think it's probably too late to sow beets now in zone 6. I sow mine in mid July, and the tops are nice now, but no roots yet. I sow carrots the same time. Also nice tops, but no roots yet.

My tops on both the carrots and beets are nice and healthy so I'm keeping them in too.

dan2007--i thought alot of rain was good. I know we had so much rain this season that I hardly had to water with the hose.

I always thin them as I go. I pull them out for harvest, that leaves room for the rest of them. Maybe that's not the best way but it's worked for me just fine in the past.

Beets will keep on growing until a freeze kills the tops. They do grow in the fall, because they like the cooler temperatures. If you let them grow through the year, they can get quite big (fist size), which is good if you like to juice them, but they are not really first class as golf ball size.

They will survive nicely in the ground through the winter. Under cover, I pick them into February.

Like everyone else, gardening here on Long Island has not geen great this season either, because of too much rain and then blistering heat.

Carrots & beets will keep growing right up to heavy frost, and will even winter over well if you cover them with some loose hay. You might want to consider row covers, which can be homemade, and will estend your growing season aby another month or two. Good luck,

Ron
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