Harvesting My Own Sugar Beet Seeds
Hello friends,
Back in the Winter of 2024 I was perusing the Kings Seeds website looking for seed packets to buy for the upcoming spring season. One of the packets I was looking to purchase was Sugar Beet seeds, which Kings Seeds had supplied for many years. As you may have seen in my blog, I grow Sugar Beet plants as a source of my own sugar. You can read all about my Sugar Beet extraction method in this blog post from 2023.
Except there wasn't any Sugar Beet seed packets available on their website. So I contacted Kings Seeds and asked them if they were going to be selling Sugar Beet seeds that year, and they told me they were no longer going to be stocking them. I had a little panic, but then went online to see if anyone else in New Zealand was selling Sugar Beet seeds for the home gardener. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any Sugar Beet seed suppliers, and all of the big commercial seed companies were only selling fodder beet for farmers.
So now I was panicking big time. All I had left was one packet of Sugar Beet seeds, and it was only half full. The expiry date had run out as well, and Sugar Beet are biennial, which meant that seed harvesting from any plants was two years away.
Determined not to give up, in Spring I direct sowed all the Sugar Beet seeds I had left, and impatiently waited for them to germinate. I managed to get a small number of seedlings dotted around the vegetable garden, with each plant growing under slightly different conditions, with the hope that some of the plants would survive the two year wait to collect my own Sugar Beet seeds.
A number of Sugar Beet plants managed to survive the first growing season, including a very cold winter with -6˚C frosts, and then started growing again in their second year. The Sugar Beet plants began bolting over summer, and started flowering in February of 2025. By this time the plants were very tall, about 1.5 m high, and were prone to toppling over in the wind. A number of plant supports were erected to keep the plants upright until the Sugar Beet seeds were ready to be harvested.
In late March 2025 it was finally time to start harvesting the Sugar Beet seeds, and I made the decision to harvest them by hand, picking off each of the seeds one by one as they became brown. This long and drawn out period of harvesting the seeds took around two months, and then once they were nice and dry, I stored them away over this winter.
Now I have my own Sugar Beet seeds to use year by year to make my own sugar, and to collect my own seed in Autumn, whenever I need to. And I'm also pleased to say that I have enough Sugar Beet seeds at the moment to sell my excess to other home gardeners through my small business Hearth & Oak. If you are interested in buying some of my Sugar Beet seeds so you can grow your own Sugar Beet, and then collect your own Sugar Beet seeds in the years to come, please follow this Sugar Beet seed packet link to my Felt Store.
I had not intended to use this blog commercially to sell anything through my small business Hearth & Oak, but the thought of home gardeners in New Zealand not having access to Sugar Beet seeds and plants in the coming years, was too much to bear. Rare and interesting seed varieties in New Zealand deserve to be saved, and this is my attempt at doing this for Sugar Beet at least. I hope that if you do buy some of my seeds, my blog posts on Sugar Beet will help you grow your own plants, and then collect seeds, so that you can grow Sugar Beet every year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Early Spring Vegetable Garden Update
Hello friends,
I just wanted to update you on what's been happening in the vegetable garden over winter.
The garlic I planted in late autumn has been growing well, and I even got a couple of surprise garlic plants after we forgot to harvest some bulbs last summer.
The onions and spring onions have also been growing well, and I've been harvesting our spring onions as we need to use them in recipes.
The sugar beet plants I'm growing to harvest for seed are also growing well, and I hope they'll soon send up flower buds.
And finally, I sowed peas seeds direct a couple of weeks ago as well. And as a bonus I finally have a use for the old wooden trellis I took down off the woodshed last autumn while we were painting it.
The next thing to direct plant into the ground is our seed potato varieties, but first I need to prep the garden bed they're going into.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
The Vegetable Garden is Planted
Hello friends,
Over Labour Weekend in October hubby and I planted our vegetable garden for the summer.
My first task was to weed the garlic growing in the smallest vegetable garden bed, and then also sow onions, carrots, beetroot, radish, sugarbeet and carrot seeds as well.
Hubby then dug over the two remaining large garden beds, and I added sheep pallet fertilizer for the soon to be growing plants.
For the next bed, which was already growing peas and potato plants by now, I added lettuce, rocket, black turtle beans, summer sprouting broccoli, and cabbage, that I had been growing in the glasshouse.
With the last large garden bed I planted maize, corn, and pumpkin plants in the top half. In the bottom half of the garden bed I sowed wheat and linen flax seeds, while hubby acted as a scarecrow to keep the birds off them, and then we double bird netted the seeds to protect them from the birds.
With most of the glasshouse now empty of plants, we emptied out the space, and hubby dug over the garden bed. After that there was just the task of fertilising the soil, and then planting cucumbers, basil, chillies, capsicum and many tomato plants. There was also the big task of setting up all the climbing frames for the growing plants.
It's been a few weeks now, and everything is growing nicely in the garden, despite low snow falling the week after we planted everything. I can't wait to feast on all our vegetables over the coming summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.
Spring Seed Sowing Week 4 2023
Hello friends,
We're up to week 4 of spring seed sowing, and I feel like I'm running behind. The past week has been busy painting and prepping areas of the garden for the coming growing season, but the pressure is also on to continue seed sowing as well.
Vegetable plants sowed this week:
- Beetroot Cylindra
- Cucumber Crunchy F1
- Cucumber Lebanese Medici F1
- Carrot Amsterdam Sprint
- Radish Easter Egg
- Sugar Beet
I also invested in some chicken wire cloches to prevent the sparrows from taking all my precious seed, they watched me hungrily the other day as I direct sowed the first of the root crops.
Herb plants sowed this week:
- Lemon Balm
- Orange Balm
- Olive Herb
- Basil Gustosa
- Basil Sweet Genovese
I'm particularly excited about growing the Olive Herb plants, as we definitely don't have the space to grow our own olive trees. A summary from the Kings Seeds website about the plant:
"Woody low growing border plant with green leaves that have an intense olive aroma. Said to add the flavouring of olives to marinades, pasta, a variety of meat and tomato dishes or wherever olives might be used. Combines well with thyme, rosemary, basil and tarragon flavours. The attractive yellow pompom flowers are also edible. Low maintenance plants are fairly hardy, preferring humus rich, well drained soil but will tolerate other conditions and soil types too."
Flower plants sowed this week:
- Dahlia Beeline II Keith Hammett
- Dahlia Keith Hammett NZ Gardener 2023 Seed Swap
- Dahlia Sunflower Keith Hammett
- Lavender Hidcote
I sent in a self addressed envelope to NZ Gardener in order to get some Keith Hammett dahlia seeds for this year's dahlia grow along, it's always great to see what sort of dahlias pop up, they're dahlia seeds collected from his breeding program. Each seed will be unique, and not ever seen before.
I hope your seed sowing is going well, this week is spring!
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.
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