I wasn’t planning to plant beets, but I had some extra space. Our vegetable garden consists of a whole bunch of raised bed boxes. Every year I know I am going to plant some things, but inevitably I do not have a plan for some of the boxes. Extra basil? More carrots? Something totally new? This time one of those beds got beets.

Someone I work with had a lot of seeds. They were seeds to be given out to participants of a program that got canceled last spring. Covid canceled it, probably, but anyway she had a hug bin of envelopes of donated seeds from High Mowing Seeds, a Vermont seed company. She was giving them out, so I rifled through them and figured I would try a few. I took some carrots, some spinach, swiss chard, and these funky beets.

I mean, they looked cool on the envelope–bright pink stripes. Even if we just got a few they would be nice to look at. I popped the seeds in the ground and let them do their thing. And they grew well. Leaves came out and I just let them go. I wasn’t exactly excited to have beets. We grew them when I was growing up–bright red jobbers that we ate boiled for dinner. They were OK. I didn’t hate them or anything, but there were not really my favorite.

But hey, I am a grownup now. I am allowed to change what I like. I am allowed to at least pretend I am sophisticated enough to like stripey beets. When they finally started to get big enough to eat, I pulled up a few. And they did look cool, just as advertised. I didn’t boil them but I added them to smoothies. Because of the stripes they added less color than I had imagined they would, but they added a healthy earthiness to my smoothies, which was a nice change.

Eventually, it got cold enough that the garden was pretty much done. I pulled the tomato and pepper plants and stored their cages. I cut the last lettuce. The potatoes were safely in a bin, ready to be washed and eaten over the fall. And I pulled the rest of the beets. There were quite a few, and some of them had gotten pretty big–softball sized. I washed them, peeled them, cubed them and blanched them. Then I stored them in freezer bags and off they went to the chest freezer.

Now I can add a few to my smoothies as I like. They should last quite a while. I don’t put that many in a smoothie, I’m not a weirdo, so what I have will go a long way. I have several bags and I grew them myself, and I am allowed to add them as I please thank you very much. Blanched, they add a little more color then raw, so there is that too.

The other day I planted garlic. Generally that is the last act of the fall for the garden. We have gotten a few hard frosts. We are likely to get snow tomorrow. The beets are in the freezer and the garden is put to bed. Except for those last carrots. I need to harvest those soon, crap. But it is mostly put to bed. I am already planning for next year. I am not sure about planting beets again. It depends on whether I go through what I have in the freezer, or if I get more free seeds. When I have some beds without a plan, I guess I will figure it out then.