Fall Garden and Beets

This is my first fall SFG ever. I am shocked how well the cabbage, lettuce, and spinach began to perk up and grow as soon as it became consistently chilly. The Swiss Chard and turnips are also looking up. However, the beets are just sitting there and have formed no sizeabe roots yet. The foliage is about 6 inches tall and looks healthy, and it has been almost two months since the seeds of the Detroit Dark Red germinated. All the plants are in full sun and are being watered regularly. I must be doing something wrong, or am I being too impatient?

hey there, my beets were a bit slow to form root bulb too, (about 3 months). My suggestion is just leave them in the garden, you probably have another month before the ground in your area freezes. My guess is you will get some beets.

I agree with Camprn. I grow some things in SFG boxes in MM and I have other things growing in raised beds, and both have had issues this summer with some things having some type of delay in growing. My carrots were planted in March, and one grew full size by early summer, another in later summer, one grew large in early fall, and some are still small. I've never seen this happen before. I planted a square of green beans in MM in one corner of the box that sprouted, grew to about six inches and then just sat there for months not doing anything. I pulled most of them up but missed one plant. When the temps grew cooler in fall that plant took off and grew again, and that single green bean plant spread to cover the entire grid and produced handful after handful of green beans.

The kohlrabi did the same thing. I had two small ones I just left, figuring they would die. They took off growing again a few weeks ago and produced the largest roots of any I grew this year, and they were planted in March, also. (They normally grow full-sized much sooner.) I sprinkled a little bone meal in that box because I mixed a weak batch of Mel's Mix to begin with. Perhaps the meal finally broke down enough for the plants to use.

Does anyone know if extreme weather makes plants have different needs? For example, we had a drought plus extremely high temperatures and high humidity this summer. Would that extra stress cause plants to need more phosphorus, magnesium, and/or nitrogen than in a normal year? Or if the weather had been wetter than usual would that have caused the plants to need more or less of something in the soil?