While some vegetable companion charts show that pole beans (NOT bush beans and peas) are bad companions for beets, I think it is more important to talk about why beans and peas in general may not be good for beets.  If you recall, bean and pea plants take nitrogen from the air and give it to the soil.  Basically beans and peas enrich the soil which is important for plants like lettuce, corn and cabbage.  Beet tops (the leaves) suck up the nitrogen which produces nice green leaves but not nice roots which are the beets.
For those of you who like the beet leaves and not the roots, you may want to try growing beans and peas right next door. This is just an idea that I have not tried!
To be on the safe side, I am not going to plant any peas or beans next to my beets so I don’t have any issues with the roots.
This whole issue of not interplanting beets with beans hasn’t been an issue for me so far.  This year was the first time that I planted beets so I hit it lucky by planting the beets in between scallions, kohlrabi and brussels sprouts. Beets like the onion and cabbage families – we will talk more about good companions later on! I would also consider planting beets with other root crops.
Keep on checking for more red alerts in this blog at a future date.
