A Premature Harvest

I couldn't wait.  It felt like forever since we planted our beets and they sprouted.  Various sources from a Google search say that it should take anywhere from 45-65 days from seed to harvest.  It hasn't been quite 65, but well over 45. 

These beets have been through a lot.  First, the turkeys walked over them as seedlings.  Only four remained, and then one day they just stopped growing.  One of the local bloggers I follow pulled a few baby beets last week, and I expected I'd at least find something similar.  One delicious beet we could slice in half and use as the centerpiece in our dinner salad.  However....

In case you can't tell just how small that is...

That's a normal-sized fork. 

Maybe the soil isn't rich enough or maybe they got too much rain and not enough sun.  Or maybe I should just wait until the tops look like the beets I've bought in the store, which would mean they need to triple in size, at least.  Three from this batch will remain in the ground until then (or winter, whichever comes first), but I've planted a bunch more and the seedlings have popped up.

This did inspire me to get some fish emulsion fertilizer to use on the vegetables that appear to be particularly stunted, like our peppers and cucumbers.  I'm using it on the tomatoes, too.  In the meantime, I will continue to buy our normal-sized vegetables from the grocery store.