Workhorse Crops for October

The crew working on the sweet potato harvest.
Photo McCune Porter

This is another episode in my monthly series of 14 Workhorse Crops. These crops are reliable under a wide range of conditions. We’re several months into this series, so here’s the complete list: asparagus, beans, cabbage, carrots, chard, collards/kale, garlic, potatoes, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, watermelons, winter squash, zucchini/summer squash.

I hope to help you become more efficient, productive and profitable (if selling) as you deal with another strange year. Maybe you are not at home as much as last year, or maybe your helpers have gone back to school, but you deeply appreciate sustainably grown food. You still want to garden, even with less time at home. You can use the search box to find previous month’s entries, such as September.

Workhorse Crops to Plant in October

In October in central Virginia we only have enough remaining good growing conditions outdoors to plant 3 of our 14 Workhorse crops – we can still transplant chard, collards and kale. A big step down from last month’s 8. We could also plant some garlic scallions (the soil is still too warm for us to plant garlic, but if you are in a colder zone than us, you’ll want to see this post.)

In October here, outdoor gardening is more focused on harvesting and less on planting. In contrast, October is our busiest planting month in the hoophouse! In September we direct sowed our first hoophouse bed, and sowed other crops in an outdoor nursery seedbed. Two to four weeks later, in October, we transplant them in the hoophouse. Workhorse crops getting transplanted into our hoophouse in October include Red and White Russian Kales, Bright Lights chard, and Napa Chinese cabbage. This year we are trying some carrots (actually we sowed those in September). We have plenty of other crops that don’t qualify as workhorses too!

Chard:

Swiss chard can be sown outdoors here in September, and transplanted early in October for an early winter harvest, with the option of overwintering under rowcover to provide harvests during the winter. We could direct sow chard in September and protect it for the winter, for a late winter and early spring harvest. Remember that red chard is more cold-hardy than the multi-colored types, and green chards tend to be even more hardy.

For hoophouse winter harvest, we sow Bright Lights chard in our nursery seedbed September 15 and transplant it October 16. We love the beauty of the multi-colored chard mixes, both growing and after harvest, and we have found that the hoophouse protects the crop well enough that it does not die, even without inner rowcover (unless the outdoor temperature is forecast to be below 8°F (-13°C).

Collards

This is rather late for us to transplant collards outdoors, but if we need to, and we have some good thick rowcover, we’ll do it. The extra warmth of the rowcover will help it make up for lost time.

Kale

Our last date for sowing Vates kale outdoors is 10/30. We can still transplant August-sown kale to fill gaps if we need to – see August’s post. Because kale makes some growth whenever the temperature is above about 40°F (5°C), it is a valuable winter crop. Our sunnier winter days are often warm enough for kale (and spinach!) to make some growth. We will sow more kale in late January, to give us a spring crop.

In the hoophouse we grow both the White Russian and the slightly smaller Red Russian kale. See the explanation about the merits of Oleracea and Napus kales. We make sure to transplant the shorter red kale on the south side of the bed, so it gets adequate light, with the white kale on the north. You may have noticed that red and purple-leaved vegetables grow slower and tend to be smaller than their green cousins. This is because they have less green! Green leaves are needed for photosynthesis, which enables plants to grow. Green plants also contain the reds and purples, but the green dominates. This is similar to the conundrum of red and orange fall leaves – where do those colors come from? They are there all along, but are masked by the green. In preparation for leaf fall, the trees absorb all the green chlorophyll, leaving the fall colors visible.

White Russian kale (napus type) gives us good yields in our hoophouse in winter.
Photo Pam Dawling

Garlic scallions

Garlic scallions are immature garlic plants, mostly leaves, pulled up before they make bulbs. They are the garlic equivalent of onion scallions (bunching onions, spring onions, escallions). Great for omelets, stir-fries, pesto, soups, and many other dishes.

We plant ours using the culled tiny cloves from the bulbs we save for outdoor garlic planting in early November. Tiny cloves will never produce big bulbs, so growing garlic scallions makes very good use of them! Planting garlic scallions is simplicity itself! Plant the small cloves close together in closely-spaced furrows, simply dropping the cloves in almost shoulder to shoulder, any way up that they fall. Close the furrow and mulch over the top with spoiled hay or straw.

You could plant these next to your main garlic patch, or in a part of the garden that’s easily accessible for harvest in spring. We plant our small cloves for scallions at one edge of the garden, and as we harvest, we use the weed-free area revealed to sow the lettuce seedlings for that week.

If you want to have Garlic Scallions to eat or sell in early spring, when new fresh vegetables are in short supply, and homesteaders may be running out of stored bulb onions, see my post Alliums for March. With a last frost date of 20–30 April, we harvest garlic scallions March 10 to April 30 in central Virginia, or even into May, if our supply lasts out, and we don’t need the space for something else. Harvesting is simple, although depending on your soil, you may need to loosen the plants with a fork rather than just pulling. Trim the roots, rinse, bundle, set in a small bucket with a little water, and you’re done!

A colorful salad of rainbow chard, onion scallions and garlic scallions.
Photo (and salad) by Bridget Aleshire.

Rather than dig up whole garlic scallion plants, some people cut the greens at 10″ (25 cm) tall and bunch them, allowing cuts to be made every two or three weeks. We tried this, but prefer to simply lift the whole plant once it reaches about 7″–8″ (18–20 cm). The leaves keep in better condition if still attached to the clove. Scallions can be sold in small bunches of three to six depending on size. A little goes a long way! If you do have more than you can sell in the spring, you could chop and dry them, or make pesto for sale later in the year.

You can plant garlic scallions at other times of year, if you have planting material. See Plant garlic scallions from softneck varieties (Alliums for February). If you plant in a hoophouse, more of the year opens up as a planting season. You can plant whole bulbs (the small cull ones you can’t sell, or don’t want to peel) and grow your garlic scallions already in a clump, rather than in rows of plants.

Some growers find they make more money from garlic scallions than from bulb garlic, partly because they don’t have the costs of curing and drying the bulbs! I encourage you to experiment with planting a few cloves at different times of year and record your results. Because you do not need to work with the right times for bulbing and drying down, all sorts of dates are possible!

Napa Chinese cabbage

Maybe you think I’m stretching things to classify Napa Chinese cabbage as a workhorse, but in my defense, I’ll say firstly that success in farming involves creativity and flexibility, and secondly that the Asian greens as a category are genuine Hoophouse Workhorses, as they grow so well in cool temperatures and short days. It is a cabbage! We sow Blues (53d from transplanting in mild weather) in a nursery seedbed on September 15 and transplant in the hoophouse October 2, at only two weeks old (very fast-growing in September). Because this is a heading vegetable, we leave it to grow to full size before harvesting. That will be in January. Many of the Asian Greens are harvested by the leaf, but Napa cabbage and pak choy are more often cut as a head.

Young Chinese cabbage transplants in our hoophouse.
Photo by Bridget Aleshire

Workhorse Crops to Harvest in October

Eleven of our 14 workhorse crops can be harvested in October (also true in September and August, but with substitutions!) No asparagus, no garlic, no more watermelon. Depending when the frost bites, there will be several fewer harvest options by the end of October.

Beans can be harvested until the weather gets too cold. We have covered the beds with rowcover to keep the plants warmer and growing faster. It’s true that pollinating insects can’t get at the flowers to perform their pollination services and make more beans, etc. But that doesn’t matter. We are more interested in fattening up the already pollinated beans! It’s also true that the yields are now way down, so we need to balance the benefits against the costs. Sometimes it is better to clear the crop (and its pests and diseases) and sow a cover crop.

Cabbage We harvest fall planted cabbage from September 25. We like Early Jersey Wakefield (45 days from transplanting) and Farao (64d) for fast-maturing cabbage; Melissa Savoy 85d; Early Flat Dutch 85d, Kaitlin 94d, for storage cabbage which are slower-growing. We have also liked huge Tribute 103d, Tendersweet (71d) for immediate fall use, and Wakamine (70d). Deadon (105d winter cabbage) is extremely cold hardy – we leave it outdoors until nights threaten to hit 10°F (-12°C) . Double-check those days to maturity, I may have mixed days from transplanting with days from sowing.

Deadon cabbage
Credit Johnnys Selected Seeds

Carrots: If we sowed carrots in July, we will be harvesting in October.

Chard can be harvested whenever you want some. This year our chard did extremely well all summer and we are bored silly with it! We wish we had had stored cabbage, or some fall broccoli. We are relishing our fall senposai!

The outdoor killing temperature for unprotected Bright Lights chard is 22°F (–6°C); red chard survives down to 15°F (–9.5°C) and green chard to 10°F (–12°C).

Collards can be harvested in October.

Kale can be lightly harvested, if our early August sowings came through.

Potatoes: We can plant potatoes between mid-March and mid-June, leading to harvests in July-October. Protect potatoes from frost when harvesting. Read more about potato harvest here.

Our March-planted potatoes are in the root cellar. We’ve been eating those since July. We often plan to grow more in the June planting than the March planting, as root cellar storage over the summer is more challenging for us than having them in the ground.

Sweet Corn harvest is still going, thanks to our sixth sowing on July 16.

Sweet Potato harvest at Twin Oaks. Photo McCune Porter

Sweet potatoes need harvesting in October here, before it gets too cold. Usually sweet potatoes are harvested the week the first frost typically occurs. I wrote a lot about this topic here. I wrote all the harvesting details in another post, 10/12/20.

Contrary to myth, there is no toxin that moves from frozen leaves down into the roots. On the other hand, below 55°F (13°C), they’ll get chilling injury, which can ruin the crop. Roots without leaf cover after a frost are exposed to cold air temperatures, and have lost their method of pulling water up out of the soil. I remember one awful year when we left the sweet potatoes in the ground too late, hoping they’d fatten up a bit to make up for a poor growing season. Instead, the weather got cold and wet, and the sweet potatoes were rotting in the ground (it was November by then), and those that didn’t rot got chilling damage that prevented them ever softening in cooking. Sweet potatoes that stay hard are no fun to eat!

Tomatoes are winding down. If a frost threatens we will harvest them all, including the green ones. I prefer to store them on egg trays or in shallow crates, to gradually ripen indoors. But other people prefer fried green tomatoes. To my taste buds, it could be cardboard inside the batter! I don’t know the nutrient content of fried green tomatoes, but I feel certain ripened tomatoes without batter are more nutritious!

Winter Squash harvest continues once a week throughout September and October. Stored winter squash can provide meals all winter and also in early spring when other crops are scarce. We used to harvest as late as possible in the fall, but now we prioritize getting a good cover crop established, to replenish and protect the soil, so we have a Grand Finale harvest just before Halloween, when we harvest all the large interesting almost-ripe squash, and give them away for lantern carving. Some go to the chickens too. Harvest before the fruits get frosted, which is shown by a water-soaked appearance of the skin.

Zucchini and summer squash are now being harvested every other day. Our last sowing was August 5. We harvest beyond the first fall frost, by covering that last planting with rowcover on chilly nights. But once it gets cooler, they grow slower, and are not worth checking every day.

From storage: spring cabbage, carrots, garlic and potatoes, winter squash.

Food processing is still busy.

Workhorse Crops Special Topic

Winter rye and crimson clover cover crop
Photo by McCune Porter

Cover Crops

September 17 is our last chance to sow oats as a cover crop. If sown later they will not reach a good size before they are killed by cold temperatures. The soil would not be held together well. It would be better in those circumstances to mow the weeds and leave their roots to hold the soil together over the winter.

Oats winter-kill in most of zone 7 or colder, and survive in zone 8 or warmer. The end for oats is around 10°F (-12°C), depending on their size and the frequency of cold temperatures. Large oat plants winter-kill after 3 days at 20°F (-7°C) or colder. Young oats are tolerant to temperatures down to 12°F (-11°C), until the 5 leaf stage, as the growing point is still underground. Once the plant starts to make noticeable vertical growth and form nodes (22-36 days after planting, depending on variety, sowing date, and water), oats can die at 24°F (-4°C).

Dead oats leave an easy-to-work surface for early spring vegetables.

Clovers can be sown here throughout September, as can winter wheat and winter barley. Winter rye can be sown here in September (not August – it could head up!). Hardy Austrian winter peas can be sown in late September with rye.

For more details, see my post Planning Winter Cover Crops

Sweet potato harvests over the years

Crew harvesting sweet potatoes. Photo Wren Vile

In my 10/30/20 post Growing High Yielding Sweet Potatoes, I wrote

When to harvest sweet potatoes

Unlike white potatoes, which have the annual plant sequence of vegetative growth, flowering and dying back, sweet potato plants would go on growing forever if the weather remained warm enough. Choose when to dig them up, ahead of cold weather. The longer you wait, the bigger the potatoes, but you are gambling with the weather. Usually sweet potatoes are harvested in the week that the first frost typically occurs in your region. I have written plenty already in previous years about harvesting, so I won’t go into it here. See one of the links to those posts, or my slideshow, if you want to know what comes next, or your climate is considerably colder than mine in central Virginia.

Today I looked to see the “plenty” I had written in previous years, and was surprised not to find much! Every mid-October from 2012 to 2016, I mentioned sweet potato harvest, but many times it has been in passing, and mostly yield statistics (bragging or groaning). 2012 has the most detail on doing the harvest – read it below.

In 2019 we got a very nice yield and carried on eating sweet potatoes into September. Previously people seemed to lose interest in sweet potatoes in late May, and we would distribute our surplus to other people. This year we just kept eating and enjoying them. I can report that they did get wrinkly and grow big sprouts, but were still very tasty down to the last one in late September.

We now use electric fencing to keep the deer out, and grow on biodegradable plastic mulch to keep the weeds down, and use drip irrigation to grow the sweet potatoes up. These developments in our method became necessary over the years.

Yesterday we ate sweet potato leaves as a seasonal green. You can eat these throughout the growing season, but we usually don’t, as we hesitate to take away anything that is helping the tubers grow. But at harvest time, the leaves are about to return to the soil, so we clipped the vine tips and cooked them up. OK, interesting, never going to be a favorite for me, but perfectly acceptable, and less distracting than going off to harvest somehting else to eat in the middle of the big sweet potato harvest!

Sweet potatoes ready to crate up.
Photo Nina Gentle

Sweet Potato Harvest October 2016

10/11/16: Yesterday we started harvesting our sweet potatoes. Yields look OK but not fantastic. We had a lot of problems with deer eating our sweet potatoes this year. We did have a temporary electric fence, but we often didn’t pay it good attention and it grounded out. Next year the rotation brings the sweet potatoes to a more traveled location. I can’t believe I’m already doing that “Gardener Survival Strategy” of thinking “Next Year Everything Will Be Perfect”!!

10/18/16: Our average first frost date is October 14. Actually from our own records it has averaged 10/22 over the last 11 years. . . . It’s good to be prepared.

This post includes tips on DIY weather-forecasting, and preparations for fall frosts

Sweet potatoes sorted into boxes.
Photo McCune Porter

Sweet Potato Harvest 2015

10/20/15: We got our sweet potatoes all dug and safely indoors before Saturday night’s 27F and Sunday night’s 26F. Whew! Another Garden Year Milestone passed. We got about 223 boxes this year. The boxes contain about 23lbs each, so that’s 5129 lbs, plenty to feed 100 hungry people for six or seven months. . . . Our average harvest for this size patch (about 700 plants) is 4035lbs. This year we got a yield of a little over 7lbs of sweet potatoes per plant. Last year’s record crop was 11lbs per plant.

10/13/15: We are on the point of harvesting our sweet potatoes. After all the rain we had recently, we were waiting for the soil to dry enough to walk on. . . . I was worried for a couple of days that the weather would stay cold and the sweet potatoes might rot in the cold wet soil. One year when I was fairly new to Virginia I caused us to leave the sweet potatoes in the ground till early November (hoping they would grow a bit more) and then it rained hard and we ended up with a load of sweet potatoes that either rotted directly or else went through a transition to a hard uncookable state. I learned the hard way to harvest sweet potatoes before soil drops to 55F. This week I studied the soil thermometer and the max and min thermometer and was reassured by the warm sunny days. The soil has been drying out nicely. Tomorrow we start digging. It usually takes us three afternoons. Everything looks auspicious. No rain or horribly cold weather, enough people. . .

Crates of sweet potatoes selected for growing next year’s slips.
Photo Nina Gentle

Sweet Potato Harvest 2014

10/14/14: Our sweet potato harvest is huge this year! We mostly managed to keep the deer out of the plot, by luck and a scarecrow and things that fluttered in the breeze. We’ve filled all our usual boxes and then scrambled twice to find more! . . . . I counted the equivalent of 273 normal-sized boxes in the basement this morning. At 23 pounds for our standard box, that’s about 6280 pounds. We might be up to 6500 pounds by the time we’re done. This will be our record! I think our local food pantry will be getting some sweet potatoes this winter and next spring!

I compared sweet potato yields for different years. We usually have about 600 plants in 800 row feet (16″ spacing). Yield is about 11 pounds/sweet potato plant this year. But as they say “your results may vary.” Ours certainly have. Working back from 2012, we harvested 4070 lbs, 2208 lbs, 1860 lbs, “lots” (poor record-keeping!), 5590 lbs, 3820 lbs and 4050 lbs in 2007.

Hauling sweet potatoes uphill the hard way. Sometimes we use the truck!
Photo Nina Gentle

Sweet Potato Harvest 2013

10/13/13, Sweet potatoes, statistics and inspiration: After a week of drizzle, it finally eased up and we started harvesting our sweet potatoes. . . . As usual, we set the dug roots in clusters, so we could see which plants yielded most and chose medium-sized roots from those to grow our slips next year. . . . This year, the Georgia Jet seem more productive than the Beauregard – I think that’s usual. We dug about a third of the crop the first day and got 86 boxes. The second day we had a lot of other harvesting (beans and broccoli being the most time-consuming), so we only dug another 36 boxes. . . .

Well . . . the yield dropped off a lot where the deer had been browsing (memo: fence out the deer in future!) We got a total of 177 boxes of various sizes, perhaps about 3939 pounds, almost two tons. . . .

Our yearly harvest of sweet potatoes has varied a lot, from 31 boxes (a sad year) to 243 in 2009. An average over ten years of 112 boxes, each weighing perhaps 23 pounds. . . . We always hope to have enough to last till the beginning of May, when people start to lose interest in sweet potatoes, and start hoping for tomatoes.

How we do our Sweet Potato Harvest 2012

10/12/12: Usually sweet potatoes are harvested the week the first frost typically occurs. . . . Contrary to myth, there is no toxin that moves from frozen leaves down into the roots. On the other hand, cold injury can ruin the crop, and roots without leaf cover are exposed to cold air temperatures, and have lost their method of pulling water up out of the soil. Cold wet soil can quickly rot sweet potatoes (I know, it’s happened here).

To harvest, we first remove the vines from the area to be harvested that day. There is usually 3 afternoons’ digging for ours, and we want to leave live vines to protect the rest of the crop overnight. We use pruners to snip the vines where they emerge from the soil, leaving stumps to show where to dig. We roll the vines into the spaces between the rows.

Using digging forks, we carefully dig up the roots, which grow in the ground in a bunch-of-bananas shape. We want to select good potatoes for seed, and we grow several different kinds (Georgia Jet, Beauregard, and a couple of heritage varieties whose names we don’t know), so we make sure not to mix potatoes from different rows. As we dig, we set the potatoes out beside the spot where they’ve grown, one clump per plant, so it’s easy to identify the most productive plants.

It’s important not to bruise the roots, or to leave them exposed to temperatures higher than 90°F (32°C) for more than half an hour, or they will get sun-scald. Below 55°F (13°C), they’ll get chilling injury. We also avoid any abrasion of the skin, which is very fragile at this stage. We leave the sweet potatoes to dry on the ground for 1-2 hours, unless the weather is unsuitable. This year we had ideal weather, not too hot, not too cold, breezy enough to dry the skins, sunny.

We want to grow our own slips (baby plants) next year, so we save at least 1 root per 5 slips wanted. (1 good slip every 16″.) So to plant 800 row feet, (600 slips), we save 100 each of our two main varieties and 20 each of the two heirlooms. That should be plenty. Some will shrivel or rot, so we allow a margin. We don’t save for seed any roots that look diseased. We choose plants with a high yield and no string (rat-tail) roots. From these plants, we choose small-medium sized potatoes with typical shape and color.

When grading and crating the roots in the field, we first choose the seed potatoes, and then sort storable from “Use First” roots. Large open broken surfaces will cure and can be stored, but any roots with soft wet damaged areas or deep holes (whether from voles, bugs or fork tines) will not store, and should be graded out, for composting or immediate use. We sort into 4″ deep wood flats or 5″ plastic crates for curing, and buckets for the “Use First” category.

Boxes of sweet potatoes curing.
Photo Nina Gentle

Immediately after harvest, we take the boxes of sweet potatoes into a warm damp basement below the dining hall, to cure. This allows the skin to thicken, cuts to heal over and some of the starches to convert to sugars. Uncured “green” sweet potatoes are not very sweet at all, and are better used in dishes where they combine with other foods. A baked uncured sweet potato is a sad disappointment.

We stack our boxes of roots on pallets, and put wooden spacer sticks between boxes in each stack, to ensure airflow. We get quite good temperatures, but keeping humidity up is difficult for us. We cover the flats with newspaper to hold in some moisture. The best result seems to come from splashing water on the concrete floor several times each day. We use box fans to improve the airflow, and the basement already has some natural ventilation.

Ideal conditions for curing are 85-90°F (29-32°C), and 80-95% humidity for 4-7 days, with some airflow and ventilation. Curing takes longer if conditions are less than perfect. The length of the curing period also varies with the dryness of the soil just prior to harvest. We usually reckon on 10-14 days. . . . .

So – how did we do this year? Middle of the road, I’d say. Decent yields, but not a bumper crop – we still had empty boxes left over. The deer were regularly eating our vines until quite recently. Last year we had a dog to chase the deer off, but he met with a road accident. His replacement was old, and she just wanted to be a pet, so we had deer again. We used drip irrigation and biodegradable plastic mulch this year, and did a good job of weeding, so I put the lower yields down to deer damage.

Sweet potatoes on a plate.
Photo Brittany Lewis

What Makes Sweet Potatoes Sprout?

Sweet potatoes crated in the field.
Photo Nina Gentle

The difference between Peruvian (“white”) potatoes and sweet potatoes

Peruvian potatoes (sometimes mistakenly called Irish potatoes) are stem tubers in the nightshade family; sweet potatoes are root tubers in the Morning Glory family. Stem tubers have buds, nodes and internodes, and scaly leaves, and the ability to develop chlorophyll when exposed to light. Root tubers do not have these attributes. This article is only about sweet potatoes.

The difference between curing and storage

Some vegetables need to cure before storage and the curing conditions are different from those needed for storage. Curing allows skins to harden and some of the starches to convert to sugars. These changes help the tubers to store for months.

Curing sweet potatoes

Within an hour or two after harvest, field drying, sorting and crating, take the boxes of sweet potatoes to a warm, damp indoor space to cure. Curing allows the skin to thicken, cuts to heal, and some of the starches to convert to sugars. Uncured sweet potatoes are not very sweet, will not bake well, and are best used in dishes with other foods.

In addition to promoting the healing of wounds acquired during harvesting and handling, the curing conditions are necessary for development of a protective cork layer over the whole root. And a waxy material (suberin) is produced by the root’s outer cells and covers the skin. This layer acts as a barrier to disease organisms, and prevents excess moisture loss.

Curing involves optimizing three conditions: temperature, relative humidity and ventilation. Ideal curing conditions are 85°F–90°F (29°C–32°C), and 80–95% humidity for 4–7 days. Curing takes longer (as much as 3 weeks) if conditions are less than perfect. Dry air does not lead to good curing. If the air is below 66% humidity, timely good healing will not take place, and the sweet potatoes will not store well unless more time is allowed. The loss from decay in sweet potatoes cured at 50% is twice that of those cured at 82%. (Storage of sweetpotatoes, Jacob Martin Lutz, USDA, 1958)

In the past we used our greenhouse to cure sweet potatoes, but it really is too hot and sunny, and dry. Nowadays we use a heated basement. We stack our 4” (10cm) deep boxes of roots on pallets, with wood spacer bars between boxes in each stack, to ensure air flow. We use box fans to improve the airflow, and the basement already has some natural ventilation. We reckon on 10–14 days.

We get quite good temperatures, but keeping humidity up is difficult for us. We cover the flats with newspaper to hold in some moisture. Some people use perforated plastic. We have also used domestic humidifiers and we’ve tried hanging strips of wet cloth from the ceiling. The best result seems to come from splashing water on the concrete floor several times each day.

To test if curing is complete, rub two sweet potatoes together. If the skins scratch, they need to cure longer. Curing longer than needed leads to sprouting.

Sweet potato storage

Sweet potatoes can be stored in the same room they are cured in, but it is important to cool the room evenly and fairly rapidly from the curing temperature of 85°F–90°F (29°C–32°C), to the storage temp of 55–60°F (13°C–16°C) in 10 days or fewer.

Above 60°F (16°C), shrinking, pithiness, and internal cork (a symptom of a viral disease) when the virus is present may occur, and below 55°F (13°C), a permanent chilling injury (Hard Core) can happen. The potatoes remain hard no matter how long you cook them, and are useless. Do not ever let the temperature drop below 50°F (10°C). Ideal storage conditions for sweet potatoes include 60–70% humidity, up to 85 %, with one air change each day. If the heat circulation is uneven, hot spots can develop in front of the heaters and cause severe losses. Never let hot air blow directly on the sweet potatoes. Do not store in airtight containers, sweet potatoes need one complete air change per day.

Ken Allan, in Sweet Potatoes for the Home Garden, informs us that at about 60°F (16°C), the metabolism of the sweet potato slows to near zero, meaning it won’t grow. Temperatures above 70°F (21°C) are conditions that allow growth: although slow at 70°F (21°C), the rate increases to fast at 100°F (38°C).

We use a rodent-proof “cage” in our basement. We stack the boxes directly on top of each other and this seems to keep enough moisture in. This way, assuming we had a good enough harvest, we can still have sweet potatoes into May and early June. Shrinkage occurs at 1–2 % per month if cured, 2–5 % if uncured. In some cultivars, pithiness also increases with length of storage.

Sweet potatoes do not need to be in the dark. Dormancy is generally broken by moisture and warmth, not daylight. Green sweet potato sprouts are edible, not toxic, as white potato sprouts are.

The effects of ethylene

Ethylene is a naturally occurring, odorless, colorless gas produced by many fruits and vegetables, but it can also be produced by faulty heating units and combustion engines. Propane heaters should not be used, as propane combustion produces ethylene. Incomplete combustion of organic fuels can result in the production of carbon monoxide, ethylene and other byproducts. Do not use any unvented hydrocarbon fuel heaters near stored produce.

Ethylene is associated with ripening, sprouting and rotting. Some crops produce ethylene in storage—apples, cantaloupes, ripening tomatoes all produce higher than average amounts. Chilling, wounding and pathogen attack can all induce ethylene formation in damaged crops.

Some crops, including most cut greens, are not sensitive to ethylene and can be stored in the same space as ethylene-producing crops. Other crops are very sensitive and will deteriorate in a high-ethylene environment. Potatoes will sprout, ripe fruits will go over the top, carrots lose their sweetness and become bitter. Sweet potatoes are sensitive to ethylene and should not be stored with any crops or any heating systems that produce ethylene. Symptoms are difficult to diagnose, but ethylene can cause internal darkening and pithy areas, as well as sprouting.

Accidental sprouting of sweet potatoes

If your curing or storage conditions were not right, you may get early sprouting. If this happens, snap off the sprouts and use the sweet potatoes as soon as possible. If the sweet potato also has soft and wrinkly flesh, it’s an indication that it has lost nutrients. Left longer, spouted sweet potatoes become mushy and turn brown or black.

Seed sweet potatoes growing slips.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Intentional sprouting of sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes that are intended for sprouting are kept under normal storage conditions, then conditioned for 2 weeks (or even 4), before you start to grow slips. Start 10–12 weeks before your planting date, conditioning at 75°F–85°F (24°C–29°C), 95% humidity for 2–4 weeks, then set to sprout. Set up a place with light, humidity and ventilation at 75°F–85°F (24°C–29°C) and 12″ (30 cm) of headroom.

Summary: Sweet potatoes are more likely to sprout if they were cured for too long; curing conditions were too far from ideal; temperatures stayed too high—above 60°F (16°C)—once the sweet potatoes were cured (especially at high humidity); they were exposed to low temperatures followed by higher ones; they were physically damaged or stored near ethylene sources.

Heritage Harvest Festival, Carolina Farm Stewardship Assoc Conference, Succession Planting Podcast

After a couple of summer months off from speaking at events, I am gearing up for the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, near Charlottesville. This two day festival has a day of ticketed workshops on Friday September 8 and a field day on Saturday September 9. Saturday workshops, demonstrations, tours and kids events are all included with the price of admission.

Never been to Monticello’s annual Heritage Harvest Festival? What exactly is it? Get your tickets now to join in 9/8-9/9. You’ll find a variety of interesting events and workshops focused on all things related to gardening, cooking and food. You can learn everything from how to make cider, how to keep your garden alive throughout the winter, or even how to become a chicken whisperer. There is something for everyone! See the schedule of events here.

This year I am presenting my workshop Growing Sweet Potatoes on Friday at 3.30 pm, followed by book-signing at the Bookshop at 4.45 pm. Bring your grubby well-thumbed old copy of Sustainable Market Farming for me to sign, or buy a fresh new one for yourself, or as a gift, at the Bookshop.

Come and participate in the 11th Annual Old Timey Seed Swap at Monticello’s Heritage
Harvest Festival and learn more from Ira Wallace, one of the founders of HHF and worker/owner of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Seed savers of all levels are welcome! #HHF2017.

Seed Swap jars at Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival
Photo courtesy of Monticello

Tour Monticello’s 1,000-foot-long vegetable garden: an “Ellis Island of edible curiosities” at this year’s Heritage Harvest Festival .

Peter Hatch giving a tour of the Monticello vegetable garden.
Photo courtesy of Monticello

Come and sample more than 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, heirloom peppers and melons in the Tasting Tent.

Ira Wallace of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, at the Heritage Harvest Festival Tomato Tasting.
Photo courtesy of Monticello

My next event after that will be the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Sustainable Agriculture Conference. November 3-5, 2017 in Durham, NC. I will be talking about hoophouse growing, both in the Friday morning pre-conference and on Sunday. See my Events page (tab) for more.

Cucumbers and squash in our hoophouse.
Photo Nina Gentle

I’m doing fewer speaking events this fall/winter/spring season. I’m writing my second book, on year round vegetable production in hoophouses. I need to stay home and write, take photos, write some more, edit, draw diagrams, write more, make charts, etc.

In June, at the Vermont Mother Earth News Fair in Burlington, I took part in a podcast on Succession Planting. I thought I could embed it right here, but the closest I can manage today is this link: https://www.podbean.com/media/player/9s7a3-6cafa3?from=yiiadmin&vjs=1&skin=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=1&download=1&rtl=0

https://motherearthnewsandfriends.podbean.com/e/ep-13-succession-gardening/

Debbie Roos of Chatham County, North Carolina Cooperative Extension, steward of the very useful Growing Small Farms website, sent a heads up about a special feature of this week:

The week of August 6-12 has been declared National Farmers’ Market Week by the Farmers’ Market Coalition. It’s a great time to reflect on the importance of farmers’ markets to our communities and pledge to support our local markets, farmers, and vendors.

As demand for local food continues to grow, so too have the opportunities for America’s farmers to market fresh food directly to the consumer. The number of markets listed in the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farmers’ Market Directory has grown from 2,863 in 2000 to 8,675 in 2016.
According to statistics recently released by the USDA, farmers’ markets and farm stands account for roughly $2 billion of the $3 billion that Americans spend annually on direct-to-consumer farm product sales. This revenue, in turn, supports the livelihoods of more than 165,000 mostly small and mid-sized farms and ranches.

Farmers’ markets strengthen rural economies. According to the Farmers’ Market Coalition, farmers selling locally create 13 full-time jobs per $1 million in revenue earned, compared to three jobs created by farmers who don’t sell locally. Farmers’ markets provide a low-barrier entry point for farmers and food entrepreneurs who are just starting out and/or want to test new products by getting feedback directly from customers.

Farmers’ markets support healthy communities by increasing access to fresh, nutritious, and flavorful food. Markets also provide important opportunities for social interactions and vendors help educate the non-farming public about agriculture and local foods.

So, support your local Farmers Market, unless you grow all your own food! You can probably find something to buy, or some way to offer help. Or buy a farmer a cup of tea!

Growing for Market, Sweet potato propagation and yields

The April issue of Growing for Market is out! For those of you growing sweet potatoes, Andrew Schwerin from NW Arkansas has written an interesting article. I’ve written about starting sweet potato slips before and I have a slideshow that includes three methods of starting your own slips. He and his wife Madeleine grow 1500 feet of sweet potatoes each year, a third of their growing area.

I was interested to note their reasons for growing so many sweet potatoes (apart from the obvious fact that they can sell that many). Sweet potatoes are not a big moneymaker in terms of the space occupied. Here at Twin Oaks we pondered similar issues this winter when deciding which crops to grow. We worked down a list of 25 factors, deciding which were important to use. We chose our top handful of factors and then worked down a list of crops we might grow, awarding points (or not!) for each factor for each crop. This helped us narrow down what to focus on this year. And yes, we are growing sweet potatoes! I wrote about this in Growing for Market in February 2017.

These growers listed the following factors as their reasons to grow sweet potatoes:

Sweet potatoes produce well in our soil
They aren’t troubled by intense summer heat
Extensive vines will smother most weeds
Few pest or disease issues
Most of the labor is in early October, between intensive harvests of summer and fall crops
They store long-term for steady sales through the winter

They like Beauregard, and wanted to try using the single node cutting method, as advocated by Anthony and Caroline Boutard – see my Sweet Potato slideshow for details. Initially they were excited about the single node cutting process, as their roots produced exponentially more growing shoots each week. OK, maybe exponential is a bit of an exaggeration, but it gives the sense of it. Because they had so much propagation material, they started making 5-node slips, rooting clusters of cuttings in pots of compost, 3 nodes in the soil for roots, 2 nodes above ground.

Some of their single node cuttings failed to thrive, both in the trays and in the field, so they developed a 2-node cutting system instead, and also used their five-node slips. And so they had a trial of three sweet potato cutting methods, with plants in different 100 ft beds. In the past (using the regular slips method) they have averaged yields of 500-600 lbs of sweet potatoes per 100 ft bed, with a range from a poor 250 lbs to a few successes with 1000 lbs/bed. Of course, yield is not the only important feature of a market crop, although understandably it has a high profile for those growing 1500 row feet for sale.

At harvest, they found that their single-node sweet potato plants were producing a couple of hundred pounds per 100 ft bed. The 2-node beds produced about 500 pounds per bed, of relatively few, very large (6 – 20 lb) sweet potatoes. The plants with 3+ nodes in the soil gave more reasonable sized potatoes. They tend to get jumbos, so they have started planting closer (10″) to tackle this – not many customers want jumbos.

In his article in Growing for Market, Anthony Boutard pointed out that single-node cuttings do produce fewer tubers which are larger and better formed. This is a big advantage for growers in the north, but less so in the south. The Arkansas growers have found that the 2-node cuttings are even better at this tendency in their location, which is much further south than Anthony Boutard’s farm.

Beauregard sweet potatoes saved for seed stock.
Photo Nina Gentle

Other articles in this month’s Growing for Market include Managing a cash crisis
How to climb out of the hole by Julia Shanks, the author of The Farmer’s
Office. Farmers deal with a very seasonal cash flow, and may well have gone into farming with good farming skills but not good business skills. Julia writes about four rules for getting out of a financial hole.

Quit digging (don’t incur any more inessential expenses).
Keep the dogs at bay (communicate with your creditors about how you plan to pay, and how you plan to keep producing the goods).
Climb out (increase revenue in as many ways as possible).
Get your head out of the sand (don’t panic, face realities, be proactive).

She goes on to list 10 ways to protect yourself from getting in such a hole again.

Sam Hitchcock Tilton has an article about cultivating with walk-behind tractors, ie, weeding and hoeing with special attachments. There are some amazing walk-behind
weeding machines (manufactured and homemade) throughout the world. There
is an entire style of vegetable farming and scale of tools that have been forgotten, in between tractor work and hand growing – the scale of the walk-behind tractor. The author explains how commercially available tools can be adapted to work with a BCS or a carefully used antique walk-behind tractor.

Mike Appel and Emily Oakley contributed Every farm is unique, define success your own way. Money is not the only measure. Quality of life, family time, and personal well-being are up there too, as are wider community achievements. Farming is equal parts job and lifestyle, and the authors recommend having a strategic plan for yourself and the farm, which you update every couple of years to pinpoint goals and the steps you need to take to reach them.

Cossack Pineapple Ground Cherry
Photo **Southern Exposure Seed Exchange**

Liz Martin writes about husk cherries (ground cherries) and how to improve production of them, to make a commercial crop viable. Who would have guessed that hillling the beds before planting can make harvest so much easier, because the fruits roll down the sides?

Judson Reid and Cordelia Machanoff wrotea short piece: Fertility tips and foliar testing to maximize high tunnel crops, and Gretel Adams wrote about Scaling up the flower farm. Many of the ideas also apply to vegetable farms.

Cover crops slideshow, Hoophouse style and design article

Last week I went to the annual conference of the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, held at Hot Springs Resort, Virginia. There were about 430 attendees, a big increase from last year. I gave two presentations, Spring and Summer Hoophouses, and Cover Crops. Here’s the Cover Crops slideshow.

Cover crops for vegetable growers from Pam Dawling

In case you were there and missed the handouts, here they are:

Spring and Summer Hoophouses Handout

Cover Crops for Vegetable Growers 4pg Handout 2016

Crimson clover is a beautiful and useful cover crop.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

My next two events are

Jan 25-28, 2017 Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference Location: Hyatt Regency Hotel and Convention Center, 401 West High St, Lexington, KY 40507. 888 421 1442, 800 233 1234. Registration: http://www.ssawg.org/registration

I’m presenting two brand new 90 minute workshops: Diversify your Vegetable Crops (Friday 2-3.30pm) and Storage Vegetables for Off-Season Sales (Saturday 8.15-9.45 am). Workshops will be recorded. Book signing (Thursday 5pm) and sales.

Feb 1-4 2017 PASA Farming for the Future Conference 2000 people Location: Penn Stater Convention Center, State College, PA Registration: http://conference.pasafarming.org/

I’m presenting three 80 minute Workshops: Sweet Potatoes, (Friday Feb 2 12.50pm), Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops, (Saturday 8.30am), and Succession Planting, (Sat 3.40pm). Workshops will be recorded. Book-signings and sales.

Sweet potato harvest 2014
Photo Nina Gentle

The January 2017 issue of Growing for Market is out. It includes my article on Hoophouse style and design. As well as the Gothic/Quonset
decision and that on whether to choose roll-up, drop-down or no sidewalls, this article discusses roads, utilities, irrigation, in-ground insulation, end-wall design, inflation, airflow fans, and bed layout to match your chosen method of cultivation.

Other articles include Barbara Damrosch on flower production on a small vegetable farm (beautiful photos!), Emily Oakley on planning to grow only what you can sell (words of wisdom), Eric and Joanna Reuter with part two of their series online weather tools for farmers, Jed Beach on how to avoid and fix common financial mistakes we farmers make, and Jane Tanner on local food hubs. Plenty of good reading!

The first issue of Growing for Market that I ever picked up (years ago) had an article about flame-weeding carrots. I realized that that one article was going to save us more than the price of a subscription. Just one good idea, clearly explained, can save so much wasted time!

We won’t starve or get scurvy! Plenty of food in the winter hoophouse!
Photo Twin Oaks Community

Getting ready for frost, harvesting sweet potatoes

Our average first frost date is October 14. Actually from our own records it has averaged 10/22 over the last 11 years. So any time now, we could get a frost. We had a very light patchy frost 10/10 with a recorded overnight low of 36F, but now we are having a warm spell (very nice). It’s good to be prepared. We harvested our sweet potatoes (not a good yield, too many deer). We are getting ready to harvest our white potatoes.

DIY weather-forecasting

I recommend learning the local weather patterns by keeping records and watching what happens. Here’s what I’ve learned about ours:

Our mid-Atlantic climate is controlled by three weather systems,
- mainly by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico,
- the Bermuda High Pressure area in summer,
- recurrent waves of cold Canadian air in winter.
Rain (fairly evenly distributed throughout the year in our county)
- has slight peaks in January, February and March
- and again in early June and August.
Some parts of our area can experience long periods of drought.
- September-November is the drier season but it’s also the hurricane season, so the net result is very variable.
We use Wunderground.com but subtract 5F° from their forecast night lows for our nearest town, and mentally downgrade the chance of rain by 10%, as rain often passes us by as it scoots along the river valley north of us.

Local Information

According to a Freeze / Frost Occurrence Data pdf for Virginia which I have, in Louisa County the threshold of 36F has a 50% likelihood on Oct 3; the 32 F threshold has a 50% likelihood by Oct 13 and the 28F threshold is as likely as unlikely by Oct 27. The 90% chances occur by Oct 14, Oct 28 and Nov 13 respectively. The data for spring are available here. probably the site has the fall info too, but I’m out of time to look, due to three hours without internet this afternoon.

Frosty daikon leaves. Photo Bridget Aleshire — Frosty daikon leaves.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

Help predicting frost

We keep this reminder list handy at this time of year, when trying to make our own frost forecasts:

Frost is more likely at Twin Oaks if:

The date is after 10/14 or before 4/30.
The daytime high temperature was less than 70°F (21°C).
The sky is clear.
The temperature at sunset is less than 50°F (10°C).
The dew point forecast is low, close to freezing. Frost is unlikely if the dew point is 43°F or more.
The Wunderground 3.30pm forecast low for Louisa Northside is 37°F (3°C) or less.
The soil is dry and cool.
The moon is full or new.
There is little or no breeze, although if temperatures are falling fast, the wind is from NW and the sky is clear, then polar air may be moving in, and we’ll get a hard freeze.

We also make for ourselves a Frost Alert Card, so we can quickly know which beds we need to attend to if we decide a frost is likely. (RBs means raised beds)



Task	Crop	Notes
Harvest all edible	Asparagus beans
Harvest all edible	Eggplant
Harvest all edible	Okra
Harvest all edible	Tomatoes	Incl green
Harvest all edible	Peppers exposed to the sky
Harvest all edible	West Indian gherkins
Harvest all edible	Pickling cucumbers
Harvest all edible	Corn
Harvest all edible	Beans #4, 5	Uncover once mild again
Thick row cover	Beans #5,6	Ditto
Thick row cover	Squash	Spring hoops or none. Ditto
Thick row cover	Slicing Cucumbers	Spring hoops or none. Ditto
Thick row cover	Celery
Thick row cover	Last Lettuce bed	Double hoops – leave covered
Set sprinklers	Slicer tomatoes	Overnight from before 32F till after sun shines on plants
Set sprinklers	Romas and peppers	Ditto
Set sprinklers	Other vulnerable RBs	Ditto

FrostProtectionFundamentalsPracticeandEconomicsFAO.pdf

is a 126 page book which includes explanations of freezes and frosts (both radiation frosts and advection frosts), and a chapter on recommended methods of frost protection for food crops. probably none of us will need the information on wind machines and helicopters (maybe little drones work for small scale growers?). The publication includes frost forecasting and frost damage physiology (for growers not in a panic about immediate frosts, who want to understand what the plants are going through).

Potato harvest November 2015 Photo Lori Katz — Potato harvest November 2015
Photo Lori Katz

Seed Garden slideshow, eggplants in September, sweet potato harvest

The seed garden 90 mins pam dawling 2020 from Pam Dawling

Here’s my slideshow on growing seed crops alongside vegetable production. This is a new workshop topic for me. I shared the presentation with Ira Wallace of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, at Lynchburg College on Saturday 10/1. We also did some Show-and-Tell. My favorite bit was swirling my glass jar of tomato seed ferment, convincing everyone it wasn’t a canning project gone wrong, pouring off the pulpy water, and washing the contents to reveal the seeds as if by magic.

I’m currently working on a slideshow about sweet potatoes for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Conference Nov 4-6, 2016 in Durham, NC.

Eggplant row. Bridget Aleshire — Eggplant row.
Bridget Aleshire

About a month ago, I reported on our eggplant variety trials, seeking heat tolerant eggplant varieties. I wrote a longer piece for the Mother Earth News Organic Gardening blog. Our harvest records from July 18 on through August showed Epic clearly ahead of Nadia and Traviata. I’ll do a fuller report after the frost. That could be soon. We had a low of 36F last night, including a few patches of light frost.

Now I’ve looked at September’s harvests too. During September, Traviata produced the largest number of saleable fruits (145) compared to 138 Nadia and 135 Epic. Probably not statistically different from each other. As I’ve noted before, the eggplants are all a similar size, and so it’s no surprise that Traviata’s 145 fruits totaled the highest weight (112.5 pounds), with Nadia at 98 pounds and Epic at 95.5. Nadia had an 8% cull rate, Traviata 9% and Epic only 6.8%. Clearly, all three are good varieties.

Adding September to the figures for August and July, Epic is still the winning eggplant in terms of total yield, saleable yield, low cull ratio, and weight per fruit. That impressive leap off the starting blocks that Epic made is still holding it ahead of the pack.

The ripe fruits have got a little smaller, and there has been a noticeable drop-off in yield since the equinox.Their days are numbered.

Sweet potato harvest and seed selection crate. Photo Nina Gentle — Sweet potato harvest and seed selection crate.
Photo Nina Gentle

Out with the old, in with the new! Yesterday we started harvesting our sweet potatoes. Yields look OK but not fantastic. We had a lot of problems with deer eating our sweet potatoes this year. We did have a temporary electric fence, but we often didn’t pay it good attention and it grounded out. Next year the rotation brings the sweet potatoes to a more traveled location. I can’t believe I’m already doing that “Gardener Survival Strategy” of thinking “Next Year Everything Will Be Perfect”!!

Sweet potato harvest, new hoophouse plastic, see you in Kansas!

Our sweet potatoes curing in boxes in the basement. Photo Nina Gentle — Our sweet potatoes curing in boxes in the basement.
Photo Nina Gentle

We got our sweet potatoes all dug and safely indoors before Saturday night’s 27F and Sunday night’s 26F. Whew! Another Garden Year Milestone passed. We got about 223 boxes this year. The boxes contain about 23lbs each, so that’s 5129 lbs, plenty to feed 100 hungry people for six or seven months. Last year we had a huge harvest, and sold some for a Farm-to-School program and gave some to our local Food Bank. Our average harvest for this size patch (about 700 plants) is 4035lbs. This year we got a yield of a little over 7lbs of sweet potatoes per plant. Last year’s record crop was 11lbs per plant.

No sooner had we finished the sweet potato harvest than we put new outer roof plastic on our hoophouse (yesterday). We decided to just replace the outer layer as we thought it must have big holes, as the inflation blower wasn’t keeping the air bubble between the two layers inflated.

Pulling hoophouse plastic. Photo McCune Porter — Pulling hoophouse plastic.
Photo McCune Porter

We’ve always replaced both layers at once previously, but October is getting late in the year for this job and it’s so much easier to replace just the outer layer! We think we got some holes from a surprise hailstorm (rare here), and we knew we’d made some when we replaced the plastic a couple of years ago. We’d pulled the outer layer too tight, trimmed it, then tried to let out a bit more slack from the margins. The result was lots of holes from the wigglewire’s old positions.

But we didn’t find any huge holes in the old plastic when we got it down, and this morning the house is still not inflated, so our problem is not solved. The next suspect is the inflation blower, which has a theoretically a large enough output, but maybe it’s not working well any more. It sounds OK. Maybe some warmer days will help. . . Not sure of the science there – maybe wishful thinking. We need a well-inflated hoophouse (high tunnel) to provide winter insulation as well as keep the house sturdy in the face of winter weather.

In a couple of days I’m off to Topeka, Kansas, for the October 24-25 Mother Earth News Fair. Here are the details repeated from last week’s post:

I will be giving Fall and Winter Hoophouses as a keynote presentation on Saturday 10-11 am on the Mother Earth news stage and Spring and Summer Hoophouses
on Saturday at 1-2pm on the Organic Gardening Stage. I’ll be signing books at 11 am Saturday in the MEN Bookstore. I’ll be demonstrating How to String Weave Tomatoes using my sparkly-pink-tinsel and pencil model at the New Society booth 2055 on Saturday at 4pm, and Sunday at 10 am and 2 pm.

If you want the pdfs of the handouts, click these links:

Hoophouse in Fall and Winter Handout

Hoophouse in Spring and Summer Handout

I’ve been enjoying the Connection bimonthly newsletter from the USA National Phenology Network. They monitor the influence of climate on the phenology of plants, animals, and landscapes. “Phenology is nature’s calendar—when cherry trees bloom, when a robin builds its nest and when leaves turn color in the fall. ” They have a lively newsletter and a participatory project called Nature’s Notebook, where everyday people are encouraged to collect data in back yards, nearby parks or as part of a field study. They have a few other newsletters too, for different audiences.

Margaret Roach, author of the blog A Way to Garden, has a great post about the connections between high numbers of acorns, white-footed mice, and ticks. And acorns, chipmunks, mice and Gypsy moths. And acorns, mice and song birds.

Patchy Frost, Sweet Potato Harvest, Upcoming Events,

Jalapeno hot pepper plant with a fruit changing from green to red via black. Photo Bridget Aleshire — Jalapeno hot pepper plant with fruit changing from green to red via black.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

We had a very light touch of frost in the wee hours of Sunday October 11. The thermometer in the weather box recorded a low of 36F, but some of the pepper plants “recorded” something chillier. At this time of year we start our special frost season pepper harvesting technique. Instead of just harvesting fully colored peppers (and removing damaged ones), we harvest all peppers exposed to the sky, regardless of color or size. We’ve noticed that the first few frosts usually just nip the tops of the plants. So by harvesting exposed fruits we give the ones lower on the plant a bit longer to ripen, with the protection of the upper leaves. Next time there is a frost, another layer of leaves will get nipped and we’ll harvest another layer of peppers. This also has the advantage that we don’t have to deal with too many peppers at once. Eventually, of course, we’ll either harvest everything or give up. Often there are nice periods of mild weather in between the first few frosts. looks like next weekend will bring some more definite frosts.

Sweet potatoes and our last corn of the year. Photo from September, by Ezra Freeman

We are on the point of harvesting our sweet potatoes. After all the rain we had recently, we were waiting for the soil to dry enough to walk on. Then we were waiting for several key crew members to come back from helping harvest sorghum for syrup at Sandhill Farm in Missouri. Sandhill, like Twin Oaks, is an egalitarian intentional community. We have a labor exchange program between our communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities so that each community can ask for help from the other communities when they most need it and pay it back at another time. Work for a sister community counts as work for the home community. Sandhill asks for help at sorghum harvest. naturally enough this job appeals to members who do agricultural work at home. So we been short-handed in the garden for the past ten days.

I was worried for a couple of days that the weather would stay cold and the sweet potatoes might rot in the cold wet soil. One year when I was fairly new to Virginia I caused us to leave the sweet potatoes in the ground till early November (hoping they would grow a bit more) and then it rained hard and we ended up with a load of sweet potatoes that either rotted directly or else went through a transition to a hard uncookable state. I learned the hard way to harvest sweet potatoes before soil drops to 55F. This week I studied the soil thermometer and the max and min thermometer and was reassured by the warm sunny days. The soil has been drying out nicely. Tomorrow we start digging. It usually takes us three afternoons. Everything looks auspicious. No rain or horribly cold weather, enough people. . .

Meanwhile we have been working around a Big Ditch, which will soon connect our new grid-linked solar array to the main service panel. Life has been difficult, and the job is lingering because the Big Ditch filled with the heavy rains we had, then we found some unexpected old phone lines (and accidentally cut them). And then the supplies didn’t arrive when they should have. And so on. Everyone is probably familiar with projects which take a lot longer to complete than intended. Soon it will all be done, we’ll be able to disk and prepare the future garlic area take carts along the path again. And we’ll be using more of the sunlight to make electricity!!

Ditch for cables to connect up solar array. Raised beds on the right. Photo Bridget Aleshire — Ditch for cables to connect up solar array. Raised beds on the right.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

Upcoming Events I’ll be speaking at

The weekend of October 24-25 I will be at the Mother Earth News Fair in Topeka, Kansas with my two Hoophouse workshops:

Hoophouse in Fall and Winter Handout

Hoophouse in Spring and Summer Handout

November 6-8 I will be at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Sustainable Agriculture Conference, in Durham, North Carolina. Click here for the Conference page. I’m doing two workshops, Cold-Hardy Winter Vegetables – on Saturday November7, 8.30-10am, and Succession Plantings for Continuous Harvests – on Sunday November 8, 10.45am-12.15pm. I will also do book signing at the BookSignAGanza, Saturday 5-6pm.

January 27-30 I will be at the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group’s Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference in Lexington, Kentucky. On the website you can sign up for the e-newsletter and around October 15, you can do Early Bird Registration. I will be doing book signing on the Thursday evening Jan 28 from 7 – 8 pm, following the 25 Years in the Field talks by several people with a long history of contributing to the growth in sustainable and organic agriculture and local foods . I will be giving a 75 minute presentation on Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale on Friday Jan 29, 9.45 -11 am. There are about 8 conference tracks (simultaneous workshops), and the conference ends on Saturday evening with a fantastic Taste of Kentucky Banquet and live music at the bar.

I hope to be at the Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, North Carolina. Too soon to say for sure.