The Lemon Fool

Ive googled but havent found anything to help me so helpfully the good eenizens of TLF can help.

Ive a row of growoing beetroot seedlins. They are very "thick" - i just spread a whole packet of seeds into a 5/6 foot long line - as kmuch as cos my earlier attempt of spaving each seed 3 inches apart failed totally and not a single one germinated!.

Anyway clearly I have to think them out. But I cant find out "when". Im also reading dd advice about thining out by removing elave but leaving the roots in the ground. that doesn't make any sense to me at all!

Currently i guess each seedling has 2-3-4 stems about 2 inches at most tall. As I said they are very closely clumped.

Is it just a case of removing enough TOTAL seedlings to leave some eg 1 inch apart for now, and thin further once they have developed some more?
(there are no bulbs on the bottom of them at all yet of course).

didds wrote:
Is it just a case of removing enough TOTAL [beetroot] seedlings to leave some eg 1 inch apart for now, and thin further once they have developed some more?

That seems to be the general thinning method, but any spacing distances you use might well depend on how large you want the beets to be when you plan on pulling them for use, so there's some scope for people having different views on spacing distances, and of course you can vary them yourself if you have a patch which you intend to pull 'smaller' compared to one where you might want to leave them a little longer and gain some more size...

A couple of videos that might give some help and assurance -

Thinning Beets - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB6FuHi7-0Y

Thinning Beet Seedlings. What spacing to use, and why I use a 1st and 2nd thinning method - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DtoQ575W7k

Note that when the second video talks about '1st and 2nd thinning method', the 1st is where they initially space the seeds themselves, so not strictly a thinning process, but a method to help later on...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess