Beet (plant)

“ According to this hypothesis, cultivation alone preserved the species, unless it is at last discovered in some spot in its ancient habitation—in Mexico or Columbia, for instance.173
Beetroot—Beta vulgaris and B. maritima, Linnæus; Beta vulgaris, Moquin.
This plant is cultivated sometimes for its fleshy root (red beet) , sometimes for its leaves, which are used as a vegetable (white beet) , but botanists are generally agreed in not dividing the species. It is known from other examples that plants slender rooted by nature easily become fleshy rooted from the effects of soil or cultivation. ”

“ Sow the seeds in the spring as soon as danger of frost has passed. Beets should be planted in drills 12 to 18 inches apart, and when the plants are well up they should be thinned to 4 or 5 inches in the row. If desirable to plant in rows 3 feet apart for horse cultivation, the seeds may be sown in a double drill with 6 inches between, leaving 30 inches for cultivation. Two ounces of beet seed are required to plant 100 feet of row, or 5 pounds to the acre. As a rule each seed ball contains more than one seed, and this accounts for beets coming up very thickly. ”

“ Now if we leave one of these fleshy roots—for instance the beet—in the ground through the winter instead of storing it in the cellar for table use, when spring comes the plant will begin to put forth a new growth, much more vigorous than that of the first year, and quite different. It will send up strong shoots bearing flowers and ripening seed. ”

“ The fact that there is only one main root does not prove anything. An annual plant has only one stem, but a perennial species has many. The average height of the last is a [817] reliable character, but the casual height of the former is very uncertain.
So it is with the beets. A beet may be divided by its buds and give quite a number of roots, belonging to the same individual. These secondary roots have been tested for the amount of sugar, and found to exhibit a manifest degree of variability. ”

“ Beets make a strong draft on some components of the soil, and it is a common experience that they should not be grown year after year for a long period, but should take their place in a rotation, in the course of which one or two crops of beets should be followed by a crop of grain, and that if possible by a leguminous plant like alfalfa or an annual legume like burr clover used for pasturage, and then to beets again. Beets improve soil for grain, because of the deep running of the root, and because beet culture is not profitable without deep plowing and continuous summer cultivation. ”

“ This thoroughly decayed stable-manure has become the best of plant-food; it warms the ground, and carries the germinating seed and young plants with vigor through the first cold, wet weeks.
In the home garden there are several reasons for sowing beet-seed thickly. Unfavorable weather and insects will be less apt to cause a thin, broken stand of plants. In order to produce good roots, however, the plants should be thinned out so as to stand eventually three or four inches apart I do not advise very large, coarse roots for the table. For home use I think only three varieties are essential. ”

“ This is a plant, too, that is sometimes transplanted; and it thrives all the better, like the lettuce, if the roots are well covered with manure, in a moist soil. Beet is mostly eaten1124 with lentils and beans; it is prepared also in the same way as cabbage, with mustard more particularly, the pungency of which relieves its insipidity. Medical men are of opinion that beet is a more unwholesome1125 vegetable than cabbage ”

“ In a single morning, cucumbers will be mixed with each other, and with canteloupes; squashes will be crossed, and in the next generation will show it. Where the organs of flowers are protected, as in the pea, bean, etc., by a floral envelope, insects do not mix their pollen. I have never known pure beet seed raised in a private garden which had more than the single kind in it—or when another garden was near which had other sorts.
We prefer, generally, northern seeds to those raised elsewhere. A mere change of soil and climate is often advantageous to seeds. ”

“ Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard - what a homely, human look they have! They are an integral part of every old homestead. Your smart, new place will wait long before they draw near it."
How the bees love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. ”

“ The willow-herb, which is an abundant secreter of nectar and thus attracts bees freely, illustrates one feature in pollination by bees. A young blossom of this plant (fig. 44, A) shows the stamens maturing and shedding their pollen, while the pistil remains curved downward and with closed stigmas. In the older flower (fig. 44, B) , the stamens having shed their pollen and begun to wither, the pistil has straightened up and exposed its stigmatic surfaces for the reception of the pollen which a bee chancing to come from a younger blossom is likely to bring. ”

“ Beet.—The turnip-rooted blood beet should be sown for the earliest crop; the long blood beet for the late crop, and for winter use. The blood beet is the proper garden beet. The scarcity, the sugar beets (so called) , white, yellow, and red, are inferior for table use. Every year we see accounts of new varieties, which are seldom mentioned a second time, while these old standard sorts hold their own from year to year. We see people running around among their neighbors for beet-seed, careless whether it is early or late, coarse fleshed or fine grained, sweet or insipid. ”

“ Soon it flies away to another plant of the same kind, where, in repeating the process just described, it unwittingly brushes some of the pollen from the first blossom upon the pistil of the second, where it helps to make new seeds. Thus these busy bees which hum so restlessly through the long summer days are working better than they know and are accomplishing more important feats than the mere honey-making which we usually associate with their ceaseless activity. ”

“ The bees are the most useful of all, and we now see what service they render to plants, for when a little worker dips into a flower in search of nectar, her body becomes covered with pollen. It may be that the next flower she comes to is one in which the stigma is ripe, so that the bee, as she pushes her way in, rubs her pollen-covered body against it, [111] and thus the flower is fertilised by pollen from another plant. When a bee is nectar-gathering, you will notice that she always keeps to one kind of plant on each journey, just as the pollen gatherers do. ”

“ The common white beet has many great leaves next the ground, somewhat large and of a whitish green colour. The stalk is great, strong, and ribbed, bearing great store of leaves upon it, almost to the very top of it: The flowers grow in very long tufts, small at the end, and turning down their heads, which are small, pale greenish, yellow, buds, giving cornered prickly seed. The root is great, long, and hard, and when it has given seed is of no use at all. ”

“ Commonest of all with us is this rank weed, which possesses the dignity of a rubber plant. Much more attractive to human eyes, at least, than the dull, pale, brownish-pink umbels of flowers are its exquisite silky seed-tufts. But not so with insects. Knowing that the slightly fragrant blossoms are rich in nectar, bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies come to feast. ”

“ There is no prospect here of any seed being set unless the pollen of another flower is secured. Now what are the chances in favor of this? They are many: In the first place the blossom is unusually large and showy, from its size and shape alone almost certain to arrest the attention of the passing bee; next, the color is not only conspicuous, but it is also one which has been found to be especially attractive to bees; blue and purple flowers being particularly sought by these insects. ”

“ Many a plant now in splendid bloom, animated by the spirit of loveliness that presides over the law of reproduction, will soon be casting its seed and bringing its brief destiny to a close. Now all is coquetry, beauty, and ravishment. The rock-hiving bees, unconscious instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. ”

“ We all marvel at the industry of the honey bee; how tirelessly it buzzes from flower to flower, from each gathering a drop of the nectar, with which it fills its cells; but we do not always realize the double duty it is doing, for it is a most reliable and active agent for the propagations of a great many plants. Many butterflies, bees, and even beetles unconsciously accomplish the same result, and it is now conceded that each has special colors that are attractive to them. For instance, the bumblebee has a strong preference for blues and purples. ”

“ A few flies and beetles visit them; but apparently the less specialized bees, chiefly those of the Halictus tribe, which predominate in May, are the principal guests. These alight in the center of the widely expanded blossoms set on the upper side of the branching raceme so as to make their nectar and pollen easily accessible; and as the newly opened flower has its stigma already receptive to pollen brought to it while its own anthers are closed, it follows the plant is dependent upon the bees' help, as well as the birds', to perpetuate itself. ”

“ The grey-green leaves are narrow and succulent, and are arranged in whorls of four on the stem. The flowers are furnished with a long spur which contains the honey, [67] and are only visited by bees and humble-bees. The common humble-bee has a long enough tongue to reach to the tip of the spur and is the chief agent in the fertilisation of the plant. The orange-yellow spot at the only opening to the flower is equivalent to a notice “this way to the honey.” Should no insect visit a flower self-fertilisation will nevertheless occur and seeds will be produced all the same. ”

“ For bees, then, the following plants should be grown—thyme, apiastrum, the rose, the various violets, the lily, the cytisus, the bean, the fitch, cunila, the poppy, conyza,2102 cassia, the melilote,340 melissophyllum,2103 and the cerintha.2104 This last is a plant with a white leaf, bent inwards, the stem of it being a cubit in height, with a flower at the top presenting a concavity full of a juice like honey. ”

“ Many of these tree blossoms are neither bright enough to attract the attention of the bees and butterflies, nor so fragrant as to tempt the passing insects to visit them; for when the flower handkerchiefs are not large and bright enough to signal the bees, the blossom often gives notice of its presence by a strong perfume. How, then, is the pollen from one flower to reach the pistil of another? ”

“ This plant is frequented by bees, whose practice it is to begin with the lowest flowers and ascend gradually to the top. This order in seeking to extract the honey, proves to be the proper one for fertilizing of the plant, because the pollen which the bee brings will be received by the riper flower on which it lands, and when that has been deposited, fresh pollen will adhere to the bee as it rises to the less matured flowers, and thus it departs laden with pollen destined for the lowest flowers of the next plant it visits. ”

“ Its fuzzy body, admirably adapted to be a pollen brush, its swift wings and its sedulous attention to business, all tend to make it the most important of the flower partners. Thus, especially for the bee, have thousands of flower species developed nectar, in pockets placed cunningly to entice her to take upon herself a pollen load. And for countless ages the flowers have painted their petals various hues and shed on the atmosphere their perfume, to advertise to the bee-world that they had pollen and nectar to spare. ”

“ This is due to the intensive cultivation of the beets and to the humus left in the ground in the form of rootlets. Experience has taught the farmer that no other crop is so beneficial to the soil as beets grown in the right rotation and with proper care.
THINNING
As soon as the beets are up and the rows clearly defined, thinning becomes necessary. This is one of the most important features of beet culture and is a tedious and expensive operation. It consists of cutting out the plants so that individual roots remain, spaced about eight inches apart. ”

“ They seek it as they do other blossoms, not only for honey, but for the pollen itself, which stands them in place of bread The very shape of the flower is due to the visits of countless generations of this insect. The bee is the insect best adapted to fertilize the lupin, and when he alights upon the threshold of a blossom his weight draws the lower petal down, and entering to suck the sweets he gets his head dusted with pollen. ”

“ Bees visiting the flower fall into the bucket and crawl out at the spout. By the peculiar arrangement of the parts of the flower, the first bee which does so, carries away the pollen mass glued to his back, and then when he has his next involuntary bath in another flower, as he crawls out, the pollen attached to him comes in contact with the stigma of that second flower and fertilises it. ”

“ Then as soon as the bee arrives near the summit of the spike she will withdraw fresh pollinia, will fly to the lower flowers on another plant, and fertilize them; and thus, as she goes her rounds and adds to her store of honey, she continually fertilizes fresh flowers and perpetuates the race of autumnal spiranthes, which will yield honey to future generations of bees. ”