Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.
American novelist, Tom Robbins, confirms eating beets are a part of an equation for life.
It is a strange summer so far, with sporadic thunderstorms and humid days as I spend time between city and country. Trips were planned and trips were cancelled, and most events were non-events.
I was mostly at my farm in Robertson in the Southern Highlands. Fresh air, eating garden produce, new-laid eggs, lettuce, Lionheart cabbages, spinach, beetroot, oranges and lemons and later digging up Dutch Cream and Sebago potatoes. I was energised to sit on a little white stool and work in a courtyard garden, weeding, cutting back for spring, planting bare-rooted roses and tomatoes.
Among the many strong-coloured vegetables beetroot has long been a favourite, influenced by my mother, no doubt, with her Christmas presents to friends of home-cooked jars of beetroot in cider vinegar and sprigs of mint. When the beetroot was finished one drank the cider vinegar… another health food. My birthday is near, a significant seventy-seven, another reminder of the importance of this group of food, which I outline in the Colour Diet of my first book, Ripe Energy. If you are curious about this book, you can read more here.
One method for planting beetroot is to sprinkle seed everywhere but packing a bed with vegetables can be self-defeating as the plants struggle for room and nutrients and the result is disappointing. Carrots especially will suffer from over planting and be somewhat bitter
Sowing beetroot or carrot seeds lightly, mixed with radish seeds, works well as the latter push through the soil quickly and can be pulled while young and mild-tasting, leaving the other two vegetables to mature more slowly. My last crop was grown from seedlings purchased at the plant nursery in late winter. They grew and grew while none bolted or went to seed as the weather warmed. I examined the leaves, hawk-like, for any sign of sneaky snails, which finally arrived in force with a very wet summer to be collected in containers and fed to the chooks. While this hot wet humid summer has done no favours for our vine-growing vegetables….cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes and small marrows, destroying their leaves with thick powdery mildew and stunting the fruit, it has benefitted other vegetables, principally beetroot, onions and cabbages.
Beetroot like a tomato can be used as a vegetable or for salads and was once an icon component of the traditional Aussie hamburger. Today, sadly, that integral role has been replaced by a slice of cheese.
Many will remember the great childhood educator, Dr Benjamin Spock, who wrote Baby and Childcare, first published in 1948? His wisdom guided my mother with me and continued when I reared my two children. Dr Spock detailed one experiment he conducted with crawling babies and bowls of different healthy foods. These bowls he set in a row and the babies were lined up to crawl to whichever of the bowls they fancied. One can imagine the fun of babies everywhere tasting the foods, but one baby demolished the bowl of beetroot and was perfectly content.
It is an image that has stayed with me……how the natural equilibrium of a healthy baby will lead it to eat good food, allowing me to wonder why beetroot is not more often on the family dinner table?
I didn’t think it at the time when I planted my small bed I would enjoy it so much. However, a flourishing bed of beetroot which has been producing gorgeous ruby dense globules for my dinners this year is a coincidence not to be dismissed when a big birthday looms. This is the bed that keeps on giving, I have never had so successful a red crop.
“Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.” - Thomas Eugene Robbins, American novelist.
