One of the basic things you learn about growing beets is that the seed isn’t actually seed, it’s small dried fruit that contain up to three or four tiny seeds. You’ll often get a tight little cluster of seedlings emerge, which could be a problem if you were precision seeding, going for exact spacing and no thinning. That sort of preciseness has never been a factor on this tiny farm—dealing with the vast volume of tiny carrot seed poured out by Earthway seeders in early years totally eclipsed any thinning issue one may have had with beets. Still, here’s PROOF. Beets aren’t transplant crops, but in this gardening year, I decided to try some in plug sheets. One shriveled fruit per cell. And here you can see, one “seed”, three seedlings! Could’ve also cut one open, but what’s the fun in that! They’re looking quite stretched under the fluorescents. Carrots definitely don’t like to be casually transplanted—they grow, but in my one experiment, they produced stubby little carrots. Probably something to do with the tap root being disturbed. Beets could be the same!
