I was real excited, but it turns out only one of these has sprouted so far. Of course, the ones outside have not sprouted at all. We will see....

Thanks for the tip !

I always just soak them before planting and thin them after they sprout. I know you aren't supposed to transplant beets, but I do it all the time and my plants still do produce round beets that aren't deformed or anything.

That's good to know. I soaked all the seeds, one of the crushed sprouted. I think I have half a dozen sprouts in one seed bed (out of maybe 50 seeds, and another seed bed has a little better results. I am going to start some in cups and plug into empty spots.

I think that will work just fine. It worked out very well for me the last time I had a huge winter garden, which I think was either 2012 or 2013.

Well, planted in cups, Rainbow mix, which were the newest seeds, both crushed and uncrushed sprouted at the same time. I have no problem starting Swiss chard, they are almost the same, why do beets give me such a problem?

Another experiment was "priming spinach" . This calls for soaking seed, drying it, letting it sit for up to a week. Well, of course mine sat for 11 days, ahem, and then I thought the chickens ate the seeds after I planted them. But there were sprouts today. I don't know that there's a good stand, but one variety that I held off planting, and started in cups 15 days after soaking sprouted today, 4 days after planting. My lazy behind has done this with other seeds that I've soaked and then not had time to plant. I drain the water, let them dry or at least just be moist, not soaking and plant the next day. Most of the time this works. Of course, there are always those things that don't germinate and I'm not sure why, so those things might not like this treatment.

I pricked beets from cups today and planted them. Some of them were still sprouting. I had about half a dozen that came up from the direct seeding. I wonder if I'll get weird shaped beets from the roots getting twisted as I planted. The first sprouted Oct 4, they were just sitting in the window doing very little. Time to move on. When I started it was cloudy. Of course the sun is out now. I will have to shade them when I water them in. Taking a break.