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Primary Uses: |
Sucrose |
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Planting: |
Plant between 0.25 and 0.75 inches deep
between middle of March and the end of April. Make sure soil
is firm enough to ensure good soil/seed contact. Optimum row
widths are 18-24 inches. |
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Seeding Rate: |
1 to 2 lb/acre. A population of 25,000 beets per acre at harvest has consistently given higher sugar content and yield than the lower plant populations. Beets planted in row widths of 22 to 30 inches, with beets spaced about nine inches apart, result in 31,600 and 23,000 plants per acre, respectively. |
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Fertility: |
Row fertilizer should be placed 2"
to the side, and 2" below the seed. Use 30 to 40 lb/ac N
and up to 90 lb/ac of P. K can be applied as low as 20 lb/ac
for sugarbeet. Avoid diammonium phosphate (18-46-0) and urea
(45-0-0). Sugarbeets do not grow well in highly acidic soils,
and are best on soil with a pH between 6 and 8. Over
fertilization, particularly with N, can result in poor quality
beets. |
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Insects: |
Sugarbeet root maggot, cutworms, flea
beetles, wireworms, root aphids, white grubs, and beet webworms. |
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Diseases: |
Cercospora leafspot, powdery mildew |
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Harvest: |
Harvest in late September and
October. A mechanical defoliator is used to remove all the
foliage from the beet root prior to lifting. Removal of all
foliage is essential to prevent leaf regrowth in storage
piles. Immediately following defoliation, sugarbeet
lifter-loader harvesters pull beets from the soil and load them on
trucks. The harvesters remove most of the soil from the beets. |
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Comments: |
MVB
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