Here we are at the end of the calendar summer, a season of crazy weather largely gone by! Cooler fall conditions have been around for a couple of weeks now, with ample frost watch nights, so summer’s end at this point is only…ceremonial. Still, there’s that little twinge of melancholy that comes with the official end… The fall harvest is looking fine, with lots of brassicas, a good deal of lettuce, and the last of the fall spinach in the north end of the field (above), along with some last tomatoes, lots of peppers and eggplant, spared by frost so far. There’s also Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes, still in the ground. Green beans! And, of course, that section of sweet potato, fully row covered…
Moving down the field, there are the last plantings of beets and carrots, parsnips, some Swiss chard, and lots of mowed but still untilled empty sections…
At the south end of the garden, the herbs and flowers are all hanging in there—row cover has kept even the super-cold-sensitive basils alive and well. If I’ve missed anything in the rundown, well, it’ll still be there!
Why are the sweet potatoes covered? Just for extra heat?
organicsheri: I’m keeping the sweet potatoes covered mainly for frost protection, until we get them all dug up, although they don’t like cold soil either. The plants are frost-tender, and I read that once the leaves die out, decomposition spreads down the vine and into the tubers (unlike regular potatoes, where dead roots just dry up where they’re attached). I dunno how radical that effect is, but I figured, why not keep the plants alive till harvest, just in case…