2026 Garden Thread

[begreen]

Gather the green tomatoes and bring them indoors. Many will ripen over time, providing fresh tomatoes for a while.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Sweet potato harvest today. This is a first for us. They say to cure them for a week at 80º but we don't have a spot at that temperature. What happens if they are cured at 72º?

Congratulations on a good crop of sweet potatoes, begreen. Those look nice.

My mom has for years cured her large crops of sweet potatoes on her sunporch, a glassed in room with a concrete floor. It's something like an attached greenhouse. It heats up with sun but cools off at night. She keeps the sweet potatoes there for a couple of weeks and then moves them to her basement, and they tend to last until the next summer. She has never worried about the official curing temperatures or humidity, and hers do fine, though they do probably get some pretty good heat on summer days.

When we lived in Texas I had pretty good heat but lacked humidity for curing sweet potatoes. At that time I had a double wall oven and didn't use the lower oven often, so I used to keep the sweet potatoes in the oven, and I would add a pan of hot water underneath them to keep them warm and moist. That seemed to work.

Here I only have one oven which I don't want to tie up with sweet potatoes, so last year I got hold of some large sandwich trays/party platters, and I placed them on my seed starting mats. I don't recall doing anything to add extra moisture. I think the humidity was trapped by the plastic lids, and so I kept the sweet potatoes in there for ten days or so.

I don't know that you need to have the perfect conditions for curing. I've tried to create them as I can, but I know that my mom does just fine with her method, too. Sweet potatoes do definitely prefer heat, though, so perhaps a seedling heat mat under a bin might help them out. You wouldn't want anything too hot, of course.

 

[begreen]

I don't know that you need to have the perfect conditions for curing. I've tried to create them as I can, but I know that my mom does just fine with her method, too. Sweet potatoes do definitely prefer heat, though, so perhaps a seedling heat mat under a bin might help them out. You wouldn't want anything too hot, of course.

Brilliant suggestion. I'll try that. Thanks!

 

[DuaeGuttae]

We've been having some lovely weather recently, but the last couple of days have gotten to ninety or so again. I had hoped to have a big garden workday tomorrow, but there's a good chance that the whole day will be damp and cool, so I did as much as I could today.

My mother and youngest child helped me harvest sweet potatoes. It was a good crop this year. I have them on the sunporch to cure. I can cover the whole table with plastic to trap humidity, and I have two seedling heatmats ready to turn on when the temps drop next week.


My son also helped me harvest tomatoes and peppers so that it will be done before nights drop into the forties next week. Most of these will stay on my kitchen counter to be eaten or to ripen up.



The piennolo tomatoes got sorted out and taken to our basement to hang in bunches. The first one I made has ripened nicely, though I have from time to time had to remove a spoiling tomato from it. I added the ones pcked today to the second bunch before the picture.



There's a lot of cleanup and cover crop planting as well as a few transplants that I want to do. I don't think we're in danger of frost yet, but the season is winding down.

 

[begreen]

That's a beautiful harvest! Such bounty. You and your mom make a good team!