Our experiment with sugar beets has concluded. These Lovecraftian beasts were what our crop looked like on harvest.
So we're not doing that again ( for now). When studying the crop on line earlier, ( see my Feb. 10 post ) the roots looked so smooth, uniform, tidy, and big. Since this was an experiment, I only planted about twenty seeds. Germination was not that great, and ended up with a dozen plants.
I did water the plants occasionally this past summer, and weeded them, but I'm generally trying to find food sources that can handle minimal inputs and management. During the summer, the tops looked vigorous and large, much larger than regular beets. No clue why the roots got so gnarly and feral looking. The soil had fairly good tilth and organic content.
These guys needed more peeling, cutting, and trimming than I had thought, but that was not the clincher. I just didn't get that much sugar for the effort. Running through a food processor to shred, throwing in a pot to boil a bit and then straining the water though cheesecloth, and then cooking down to a syrupy consistency, it was a fair bit of work to do at small scale, for not much reward.
Taste was ok. You could tell it was not your regular sugar, but I got no strong added taste, and when used to sweeten my last batch of granola, could detect no hint of earthy beet taste.
Did my technique need improvement? Could I have gotten a lot more sugar out with a tweak to my process? Maybe so, but for now, I think I'll stick to the maple syrup we tap and cook down. And of course, as with most of us, I could eat less sugar.
