Beet

Beta vulgaris

Amaranthaceae

A magenta kitchen root that stains the board — leaf and globe both food, with a folklore as a blood builder that is mostly the color talking.

Root and leaf are kitchen food. Sugar beet is the same species, a different selection.

Parts used: Root · Leaf
Traditional notes: Kitchen root · Pickle · A cooked green
Grow · USDA 6b: Cool-season biennial, USDA 2–10 as an annual root Direct-sow. Each ‘seed’ is a cluster — thin. In work: Mar · Apr · May · Aug · Sep · Oct
Harvest: Golf-ball to tennis-ball. Giants get woody.

Do not let them bake in July. A fall sowing is kinder in heat.
Leave an inch of stem so they do not bleed out in the pot.

Safety

Beet juice as a nitrate protocol without a clinician Known beet allergy (rare)

Companions

Plant with Garlic, Onion, Spinach.

Lore

Roman beet was mostly leaf. The swollen globe is medieval. Russian borscht and Ashkenazi pickled beet are the same plant arguing in two kitchens. Sugar beet, a 18th-century Silesian selection, ended a rum-and-cane monopoly without tasting like dessert.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.