Under the plastic, it was really hot

(Written in 2024)

We planted beet seedlings on August 19. They got leggy, so we even sprayed a growth regulator. On September 9 we bought 1,000 more, tilled the soil on the 10th, and started replanting on the 11th. Up to here, nothing seemed seriously wrong.

We tried to block weeds with plastic mulch

Planting in an open field meant there was no escaping the fight against weeds. We tilled with a cultivator, leveled it with a rake, laid plastic mulch and pinned the edges with U-pins and soil. For watering, we switched from drip irrigation to sprinklers.

A typhoon passed, and the seedlings died

This is where the problems started. A typhoon brought heavy rain and strong wind, and beet seedlings died in large numbers. When we looked into the causes at the time, three seemed to overlap. Crickets appeared to have eaten the seedlings; seedlings seemed to have slipped through gaps where the mulch didn't sit flat and burned in the hot ground heat under the plastic; and we guessed the seedlings themselves weren't sturdy, or the weather was just too hot.

Should we keep growing beets in this field?

To use plastic mulch properly, we would have needed a tractor to form ridges and plant the seedlings higher up, but no tractor could get into this field, so we could only prepare it with a cultivator and making ridges wasn't possible at all. Even that cultivator was borrowed and couldn't form beds. We had to reconsider whether to keep growing beets under the conditions of that season and that field, and in the end we decided to plant trees in this field after the beet harvest.

What was left anyway

Besides the beets, the Brussels sprouts and radishes didn't die. Seeing that only the beets were weak from the seedling stage, we also think beets may simply be a fussier crop. We decided to keep growing them and treat it as a lesson.

Looking back now — the decisions from this period are part of how we've narrowed down the crops we grow today.