VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans - French Beans - Runner Beetroot Broad Beans Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery, & Celeriac Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Herbs Kale Kohl Rabi Leaf Greens for Cooking Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens ( for cooking) Onions - spring sowing Onions - overwintering Onions - special types Oriental Greens for cooking & salads Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Root Parsley Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Swedes Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vines - Cherries Tomatoes : Vines - Larger Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Yacon

~ BEETROOT Seed ~

Beetroot are easy to grow and take about 90 days to mature:

'Albino' White Beetroot
Not just a novelty, this pointy white beetroot is great - no more red stains all over the kitchen. The flavour is just as normal. It is also the most productive and quick-growing beetroot we have found.

Although white beetroot have been known since at least Roman times, this is an improved modern variety for home gardens, and dual-purpose - the succulent green leaves have been bred for use as leaf beet or chard. We often pick the beet in the morning, cook the leaves at lunch, & eat the root for dinner.

White beetroot. Leaves also particularly good to eat

Order BtWH - 200 seed £2.21

Sanguina Beetroot
The name means "Blood". If you do want a good traditional, deep blood-red beetroot, this is the one.

Large conical roots, with intense red flesh, very juicy and sweet. This special strain from Italy is the most productive red beetroot we have found. Tender even when huge - lots of people have written in to say how much they like it.

Very large conical roots. Tender, no woodiness. Deep red.

Order BtSA - 200 seed £2.11

‘Touchstone Gold’ Yellow Beetroot
We’re very excited to offer this for the first time this year. Yellow beets used to be widely grown, but the good old garden strains are no longer well maintained, so we’ve not offered them before.

However, all that has changed. We have finally found a new one really worth growing! 

Touchstone Gold has been rebred from old seed stocks  by our friends at Wild Garden Seeds, and they have done a great job - coming up with a really vigorous, quick-growing yellow beet that makes round, bright yellow roots. It is tender and very sweet.

Although it is of course very nice cooked and sliced, that's not all you can do with beetroot. Here we have also made a raw grated beet and carrot salad, served with pasta & fresh basil pesto , chadwick cherry tomatoes, and garnished with edible borage flowers. (You'll find all the ingredients in the catalogue apart from the pasta) The Touchstone Gold is the yellow in the middle - what a great colour:

Beautiful & very productive new yellow beetroot. Edible leaves. Seed in short supply, limited to 1 packet per order.
Order BtGo - 150 seed £2.45

Saving your own Beetroot Seed:

Beetroot seed is fairly easy, provided you don't have any chard or leaf beet flowering nearby.

Beetroot flower in their second year, so you need to either leave them in the ground overwinter,
or dig up your beetroots in Autumn. Lay them all out so you can compare them, and select the best 12 - 16 roots:

Make sure you choose ones that are true-to-type: right colour, shape & size.

If your area has cold winters, store them in sand or sawdust in a cool but frost-free place, and plant out in spring.
(the ideal storage is about 5-10 C and 95% humidity). Otherwise in milder areas, replant them straight away where you want them to grow.

You can plant them outside, but you will get much more seed if you plant them in a polytunel.

The next summer they will flower (to about 5 foot high!). They will probably need staking so that they don't fall over.
Remember, that they will cross with any other flowering beetroots, chard or leaf beet nearby. The flowers are wind pollinated.

Your seed will be ready in late summer. Just rub the seed off when it is mostly brown.
You will get huge amounts of seed: dry it well, and it will be good for 3 or more years.

Above you can see a good trick with beetroot or chard seed. Our rubber door mat has holes in it.
We just stomp on the dry seed-stalks , then roll back the mat and sweep up the seed.

To clean the seed free from dust and debris, see our Winnowing Instructions in the Seedsaving table on the left.