{"id":7583,"date":"2020-02-06T09:49:30","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T15:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/?p=7583"},"modified":"2020-02-06T09:53:59","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T15:53:59","slug":"beets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/2020\/02\/06\/beets\/","title":{"rendered":"Beets"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Beets<\/h1>\n

by Joshua Heston and Dale Grubaugh.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

As with many fruits and vegetables from old-time Ozark gardens, beets were brought to these hills \u2014 and to North America \u2014 by European immigrants.<\/p>\n

The beet is a member of the Chenopodiaceae<\/span><\/em> family, which, in part, explains the hard, crunchy-textured seeds (actually clusters of nutlets).<\/p>\n

The beet, along with other crops like radishes, mustard, or turnips, get little attention these days. And the blandly flavored cans of beets \u2014 commercially grown and packed \u2014 do little to make the lowly beet stand out.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”7580″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”7579″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]However, there is a reason this root crop was domesticated millennia ago. Good cultivars, grown in quality soil, take on an amazing flavor. Earthy, deeply satisfying, and a blood-red, beets like Early Wonder<\/em>, a pre-1811 heirloom, stand out in the garden and on the table.<\/p>\n

We planted the Early Wonder<\/span><\/em> variety in the dark of the moon (to promote root growth) on April 14 with a July 5 harvest.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”7577″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”7582″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Beets tend to grow slowly compared to root crops like radishes. The crimson veins in the leaves are mighty pretty, reflecting the flesh of the root, which turned out to be extremely tender and mighty tasty.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”7581″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]We sowed this crop too close together (beet seeds are best planted 4-6 inches apart) and that, along with a dry spell, most likely contributed to our late harvest date. Early Wonder<\/em> usually matures in about 50 days.<\/p>\n

We pickled and canned most of the crop and they turned out extremely well.<\/p>\n

Originally published February 23, 2011,<\/span><\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Beets by Joshua Heston and Dale Grubaugh. As with many fruits and vegetables from old-time Ozark gardens, beets were brought to these hills \u2014 and to North America \u2014 by European immigrants. The beet is a member of the Chenopodiaceae family, which, in part, explains the hard, crunchy-textured seeds (actually clusters of nutlets). The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[582,947],"tags":[1300],"class_list":["post-7583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sotoarchive","category-sustainableozarks","tag-beets","category-582","category-947","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7583"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7587,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7583\/revisions\/7587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}