Not sure as I've never grown beets but I have stored carrots in 5 gallon buckets with very lightly moistened sand and it works well for the 2-3 months I need before they are used. Beets can also be canned or pickled if that interests you.

The Harvest forum here on GW is a good resource for all kinds or garden harvest preservation info.

They aren't a long-term storage food IME unless you can them so that is what we do. But we used to keep some in the root cellar and you can get a couple of months out of them assuming it has good temp control. The quality will still decline but slowly.

1. be sure to leave the tap root fully intact and trim the tops but leave a good 1.5 to 2" of stems attached or they will bleed out and rot.

2. do not wash but lightly brush off any loose dirt and pack them, without touching, in containers of lightly moist sand, sawdust, peat, or perlite in a lidded plastic container (plastic Rubbermaid totes work well).

3. maintain the RC temps at 40-45 degrees as much as possible.

Dave

Store at low temps and in a plastic bag or sealed container. Maybe a refrigerator drawer counts as the latter. The air in a refrigerator is extremely dry, and if you store beets there without a container to preserve moisture, they will get soft and wrinkled as they dry out. Been there, done that.

Thanks for all the thoughts. I'm considering placing the beets (with tops trimmed off, but roots left intact) in plastic bags in my unseated cellar. Given that the bags need to be pretty much closed to prevent drying, am I then providing an opening of fungus of some sort? The cellar will be cool, damp, and dark.

"Given that the bags need to be pretty much closed to prevent drying, am I then providing an opening of fungus of some sort?"

I wouldn't worry too much. I keep small beets in bags in my fridge over winter so that I can replant them in spring for seed. Fungus has never been a problem for me.

Rodney