I’m asking for help with this one. I have had pretty good success overwintering most biennials in my zone6 garden–turnips, cabbages, collards, carrots have all worked and given me seeds. I can’t, for the life of me, however, get beets to make it through the winter. The coldest winter temperature I’ve recorded in the past 8 years was -7 degrees Fahrenheit. Does anyone have advice on how to get beets to survive the cold to make seed? I don’t have a root cellar. I am hoping, eventually, to have a cold-hardy beet that doesn’t need pampering and sticks around for the spring. As it stands right now, I’ve never been able to harvest beet seeds, ever. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
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Swiss chard is the same species as beets… I’ve had good luck overwintering that. You could put row cover over your beets, and that will probably get them thru the winter. Once you get seeds from them, and I’m talking about a substantial quantity like one or two gallon size freezer bags of seed, you can do a mass sowing and probably will get some survivors without using row cover.
In general, if the plant survival rate is low, then you need to boost the numbers of seeds. So if one in one thousand survive, I’d say you need at least one hundred thousand seeds in order to get what you need. You can bump up your seed count by somewhat coddling your first generation, as with row cover. Then, keep adding genetics on an ongoing basis to prevent inbreeding depression.
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Have you tried covering the beets with mulch?
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