On Sunday, after only 5½ hours sleep due to it being so hot, I went out at 7AM. In the Big garden, the chore for the day was harvesting all the beets. The row was 11’ long but had 3’ of marigolds in the middle. So it’s really only 8’ long.
It was already 77F and due to hit the mid 90’s by noon. Check out the humidity… There’s no AC in the kitchen.
I was dismayed when the first beet I pulled up was one of the 6” diameter behemoths. I had planted the 3” pots with 1 plant in each snuggled together in a row, trying for 3” spacing. I was trying to avoid these giant beets.
They had been left a month longer than they should have as I just couldn’t get to them. Not all were so big; some were 3” diameter or so.
The greens weren’t as bad as some years so I just cut them all and piled them into my biggest bowl to overflowing.
Once inside, I cleaned up the beets some to weigh them. These were the giants and they came in at 22.35 lbs.
The smaller ones weighed 23.45 lbs, for a total of 45.8 lbs from an 8’ row. I got them all scrubbed up and ready to be boiled until tender.
I prefer to not eat greens with various diseases. Between being a month late being harvested, and the drought, the greens had started getting pests and diseases.
Many of these are fungal diseases.
But one of the more persistent pests is leaf miner. The miners are inside the leaf structure, not something I want to eat. I find it on leaves of different varieties of garden vegetables. It had not been very bad on the beets this summer. But there were so many other fungal diseases that almost all of the leaves were discarded.
I only had 1 colander full in the end, which netted 1 pint when blanched. Once the greens were done, I used the hot water to start the beets boiling. The small ones would cook for 45 – 60 minutes but those giant ones would take about 2 hours.
Once they finished it took several ice water baths to cool them down. Then I sliced them into ½” dice and packed them in pint boxes. Working with beets is an incredibly messy job. My T shirt looked like I’d been in a blood bath.
By the time I cleaned most of the mess up it was 3 PM and I was wiped out. I just flopped on the couch in front of the fan and watched videos.
I’d planned to do 12 pints for my friend, but of the 2 big pots I cooked, I only got 1 bag for her. I got 13 pints for me and the 1 of greens.
The good news is that I didn’t cook all these. The big ones I did cook were not woody or stringy; they were just perfect. So I plan to cook these on Tuesday for my friend’s remaining 11 pints. Probably not all of them though.
I’d had a garlic customer come mid morning and I had given her 4 of these giants. I hope I can give away the ones I don’t need.
I had a friend of my son’s who needed a place to stay and didn’t mind that I’d not gotten the 2nd floor ready to rent. He just wanted the one bedroom. He is a good gardener and also has many handy skills. He will do work around here as part of the rent. This will help me a huge amount. He may not stay a long time, as my son says he prefers to live on his own. But for a while I’ll have help here, I hope.
So on Monday my general helper and I will start early cleaning out the bedroom and finding places for all the stuff.