beetroot

delicious and nutritious

Beetroot is becoming the most fashionable vegetable around. Just 3 baby beetroot equals 1 of your 5 a day and they are perfect as a cold condiment or livening up salads and sandwiches. Anyone adverse to beetroot has normally tasted it soaked in overpowering vinegar. For a sweeter, more pleasant tongue tingling experience, try The Co-operative Farms’ range, grown on our own farm in Goole, Yorkshire.

Our beautiful beets come in 3 prepared varieties, taking the hassle out of cooking;

• Natural cooked beetroot
• Cooked and pickled beetroot with sweetener
• Truly Irresistible British baby beetroot in a sweet chilli marinade

And because we are the farmers we oversee every stage of the growing process, meaning we can assure you that our beetroot is of the best quality.

sowing

We aim to grow our beetroot to a uniformly perfect size and supply the market right through the year. In order to do this we select our best soils and start sowing into them as soon as they are warm enough in the spring. We sow the fields in a programmed sequence to ensure a steady supply of just the right sized beetroot throughout harvest.

Precision seeders are used to make sure that each beetroot has its own individual space in which to grow. Only the varieties giving the best taste and shape are selected.

growing

We ensure that the young crop has just the right amount of nutrients available to get it off to a flying start. We hope for some early rainfall as well but if not, we can soon gently apply water from specially designed overhead sprinklers.

When the beetroot is growing well, weeds are selectively controlled and the crop is closely monitored for any sign of leaf disease. Moth activity is monitored using pheromone lures so that the sprays used to control their dreaded cutworm larvae are used as sparingly as possible. Leaf analysis is done to trigger any required foliar nutrient applications. The crop is continually assessed as it grows and when it reaches the most delicious size the harvesting team is called in.

harvesting

It’s late September and the beetroot, which is nestled in long deep beds is ready to be lifted. First the leaves are trimmed off before the following roller bar share of the harvester gently lifts the beetroot from the soil and elevates them up the soil cleaning webs to the accompanying trailer. The trailers then tip the beetroot into a large heap where the remaining leaf stalks are allowed to dry and wilt. A few days later the beet is fed over a cleaner which shakes off the remaining soil and leaf and are loaded into a lorry for transfer to the grading and storage farm.

The beetroot then travel through the grader, a kind of shaky conveyor belt, which makes the smaller beetroot fall through holes, sorting the beets by size. It’s also the first stage of quality control, as a couple of the team keep a close eye out to pick out any beetroot that fall below their high standards.

Axgro Foods is the nearby processing and packing factory. Here the beetroot are peeled, washed and steam cooked. After the pickling process, the beetroot are packed, sealed and labelled, ready for collection.