Beets

I finally picked the beets today.  Lauren and I only planted a 10  x 3 row, but they had a good spring.  We started from seed ( pinetree garden seeds beet mix https://www.superseeds.com/ ) in the beginning of february.  We raked the bed, spread out a bunch of seed, and raked it again to try to get the seeds buried. I know you're supposed to plant them 1/2 inch deep 2 inches apart, but I got tired of carrying a ruler with me after the first couple of years of planting seeds.  I went back through and thinned the plants out a couple of times and used the leaves and little beets in spring salads.
These beets were ready to be picked a while ago, but there were only a couple with brown shoulders.  When I boiled them and skinned them to make pickled beets the rough parts came right off.
I've been pulling one up every once in a while, wiping them on my pants, and eating them.  They're a little strong and ironny that way, but it just tastes healthy.  Lauren likes 'em cooked so she got me some directions for making refrigerator pickled beets from http://whatscookingamerica.net/Vegetables/RefrigeratorPickledBeets.htm
and I made pickled beets this morning.
I cut off the tops and bottoms of the beets and dropped them in the stewpot of boiling water for a 1/2 hour.  After they'd been in the water for a while the skin slid off pretty easy using just my fingers.  A couple of the cylindrical ones required a little finger nail.  I sliced them up and put them in some jars.  I used 1/2 as much sugar as the site told me and I added some stuff to some of the jars.  I put jalepenoes in one, dill seed in another, fennel in one??, and some onion to the others.  Now they'll take up room in the fridge for a couple of weeks before we get to find out how it worked.

5/5/12-  The beets were awesome.  We gave several jars away and we polished off about 4 by ourselves.  They were great on salads, and even though Lauren didn't really like the dilly beets, when they were the only ones left she ate them anyway.  This year the beets just didn't do as well.  I planted a bunch, but we've probably only got about 20 plants out there.  No pickling this year.  I wonder if it was too warm of a winter/spring?