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Loud beets

By rights, I should be leaving my beetroot seedlings alone right now. They are, after all, only little seedlings, not so much microveg as microscopic-veg, and I’d do better to wait for their true leaves to appear.

But it’s the fifth week of the 52-week salad challenge, and while I have plenty of peashoots, mustard, lettuce and edible flowers to harvest, I don’t have anything bright and loud to set atop all those leaves, to make my salad really trendy. So the young, loud beets have made an early visit to my salad dish.

Week 5

Picking beets when they are only at seedling stage, rather than waiting a week longer for their true leaves to appear means you have a perfect garnish. You still have that sweet, earthy, beety flavour in the tiny plant, and the bright stems look fab as the crest of a salad, or sprinkled at the last minute over a dish of food.

If you wait a week, you’ll get the true leaves, which means juicier salads, but for now, a bright beet will perk up your salad no end.

I served these atop some scrambled eggs that I ate while looking mournfully out of my window at the snow.

The bulk of the salad was made up by mustard microgreens and peashoots. I’ve found that the best time to harvest the peashoots is when they start to show their first few tendrils, before the stems become tough. Mustard is best left as a microgreen until it shows its first two little true leaves, as in the picture below, so you get a flavoursome and light salad.

I scattered the beet leaves over the scrambled eggs right before serving it up, so they wouldn’t become too soggy and lose their crunch, and so that the red juices didn’t turn my eggs pink.

It is really rather splendid to be eating salads that remind me of summer when I can’t even see the grass outside, and I’m quite amazed with how much I am able to grow indoors. The only thing that makes the salad challenge rather, well, challenging, at the moment is that it takes much longer for plants - including microgreens - to germinate and grow, even in rooms where I have the heating on. It’s worth taking note of that, as it means you need to plan further ahead to ensure you have a steady supply of salads each week during the cold months.

This week I sowed

Basil, peashoots, mixed lettuce leaves, mustard, oriental salad mix.

Don’t forget to follow others taking part in the salad challenge on twitter using the hashtag#saladchat. And if you don’t have your own blog but want to write a post about your own experience of the challenge, then use our Your Blogs section.

5 Responses

  1. Maryom

    Until this week’s frost (and now snow) I’d been pulling leaves from last year’s beetroot that didn’t grow large enough to pull as roots. as well as deliberately set lettuce and spinach, I have some accidental rocket growing in the greenhouse. This sudden blip of cold weather could see the end of my home-grown salads for a while though

    Reply
  2. F&F

    Hi Maryom, that sounds a bit sad. I dread to think what all the overwintering salads on my balcony will look like when the snow thaws. Have a go at these microveg though, they really do make life seem a little cheerier during this weather.

    Reply
  3. Lea

    Those little beet sprouts do look very pretty on top of the eggs!
    Happy Gardening!
    Lea
    Lea’s Menagerie
    Mississippi, USA

    Reply
  4. Tamsin

    Thats a beautiful post!
    The picture are fantastic!
    Love the one with the eggs, it looks delicious and the baby mustards are perfection.

    Reply

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