BEETS. 



109 



skin. The roots vary greatly in form, size and in color 

 from a reddish white to a deep dark red. Some varieties have 

 special qualities for table use, while others are valuable for 

 feeding stock or for sugar only. 



The garden beet is easily grown and is a very reliable 

 crop. It prefers a very rich, sandy, well-worked soil but will 

 grow in any good corn land. For early use, some early 

 maturing kind should be selected, and the seeds should be 

 sown in rows sixteen inches apart in the open ground as soon 



as the soil can be worked in 

 the spring. Ten seeds should 

 be sown to each foot of row 

 and covered one inch deep. 

 The young plants will stand 

 quite a severe frost without 

 injury. As soon as the seed- 

 lings appear they should be 

 cultivated with a wheel hoe, 

 and the cultivation repeated 

 at frequent intervals. When 

 they are eight or ten inches 

 high, thinning should be com- 

 menced and continued until 

 the plants are six inches apart 

 in the rows. These thinnings 

 make excellent greens. If 

 sown as recommended, they 

 will be large enough for table 

 use in June and will be good 

 Fig. 49.-Bunch of Eclipse beets. for use the rest of the summer. 

 For winter use, the seed should not be sown until the last of 

 May or first of June. For late planting, some growers prefer 

 to put the rows two feet or more apart, so that w T hen the plants 

 are nicely started they can be cultivated by horse power. 

 Stock and sugar beets should be sown in rows about thirty 

 inches apart, to allow of easy cultivation. These should be 

 sown from the middle to the last of May and covered some- 

 what deeper than is recommended for early table beets, per- 

 haps one and one-half inches deep. The importance of very 

 early and constant cultivation cannot be too strongly insisted 



