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I bought some beets at a farmers market today but now find out they have a fungus (brown spots on yellow leaves). I will not eat the greens but are the beet roots edible?

Rosemary Cliff
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    You will get a better chance at an ID with a picture of the leaf, and posting the same to https://gardening.stackexchange.com/ would help to ID the issue. Beets are susceptible to a number of things, and picture might tell which one and its effects. As to edibility, with all things it tends to boil down to personal risk, but in general most leaf spotting is not something that will bother the root as long as it is still fresh and firm. Be safe though and try for a positive ID. – dlb Aug 29 '17 at 15:56
  • Welcome Rosemary! dlb is correct that we have a sister site for Gardening. I have to warn you though that we do not allow "cross posting", that is, somebody repeating their question on two sites of our network. So if you prefer to ask for a solution there, we will have to close the question here. Personally, I cannot tell you which site will be the better home for the question. If you decide to move it, you can let me know (for example by leaving a comment by starting with @rumtscho - the @ sign is important) and I can move the question for you, or you can write it anew there and delete here. – rumtscho Aug 29 '17 at 16:07
  • @rumtscho thanks on the cross-posting part, I was thinking from the standpoint of someone there being able to ID, then us clarifying that on cooking with it so seemed like two separate questions, but not really. – dlb Aug 29 '17 at 17:17
  • @rumtscho Gardening SE explicitly excludes questions about edibility. – Stephie Aug 29 '17 at 19:13

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Yes, even if the leaves are somewhat infected, the roots will usually be fine.

Unless you find soft or moldy spots, the root should be good to eat. Note that the roots, as storage organs, are in most plants especially resistant.

Stephie
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