Beet 'Bulls Blood'
Beta vulgaris 'Bulls Blood'
This is versatile herb/vegetable with multiple uses in the kitchen.
With its deep red stems and leaf veins, it is particularly ornamental and will make a splendid addition
both to your salads and your beds and borders.
The leaves can be harvested on a 'cut and come again' basis as baby leaf for salads within 40 days from sowing,
they make a colourful and tasty addition to all mixed salad greens with a mild beetroot flavour.
This is one of the staples found in supermarket mixed salad leaf packs.
Cut at 10cm tall, up to 5 times in the season.
The roots are best harvested as small, baby beets, ready to harvest after about 60 days under ideal conditions.
The plants in general are very ornamental and make a great addition of foliage colour to mixed containers throughout the year.
Sow the seeds thinly about 2cm apart in spring when the soil starts to warm up.
Multiple rows can be spaced at 30cm to allow plenty of space for hoeing.
Germination is quite slow and can be speeded up by soaking the seeds in water for 30 minutes before sowing.
The seedlings need to be carefully thinned to 5cm apart as they develop.
You can use these thinnings in salads.
Keep the soil moist especially in hot drought conditions.
Seeds can also be sown in deep containers for early salad leaves in a frost free greenhouse.