I am sure you are all congratulating yourself on your beetroot this year. I don't wish to burst your pride, but it is probably the least demanding of vegetables. Now you've mastered it, perhaps try the yellow variety. It is a little fussier, more subtly flavoured and has the added advantage of you not looking like you've severed an artery while skinning it. Also available in white and concentric white stripes; and, to those who care about looks and contrast on the plot, there is a variety with a beetroot-coloured leaf.
Common wisdom is that beetroots are best eaten at golfball size. That is easier said than done of course with, by September, your early sowings more the size and texture of crown green bowls. The trick is successional sowing which requires a discipline alien to most novice growers with limited space. Three week intervals works well for beets. The other thing, also difficult to bring myself to do even now,is to thin the seedlings. This applies to most crops but, for beetroot, you sow not a single seed but a whole cluster. I thin to about 3-4cm and harvest alternate roots when young allowing the others to grow on.
For our southwest contingent once rumoured to frequent this blog: note the way the leaf rib is the same colour as the root. In the root identity parade shown in the picture, the impostor radish is second from the left.
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