Dawg you sure got the jump on me for the fall and it looks really good. I am more than ready for some fresh garden grown brocolli.
I don't know what kind of peppers are under the sheets but my bells and jalapenos did just fine with two good frosts. We got down to 35 the other night followed by 39 the next night. Last night it only got down to 42 and I didn't see any frost this morning but I will still put the frost cloths over the beans because they are just so susceptible to the mildest frost.
Luckily I had frost cloths over my beans or they would have been done for. I was glad the remaining tomatoes and bell peppers weathered the two frost. The only fall crops I have out in the garden now are a couple of short rows of carrots that have only been up about a week, four rows of mustard greens, and some nest onions which came up in less than a week. I have a few cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts that survived the over heated greenhouse and are now potted up and hardening off and will be ready to go out in another week or so. Hopefully the squirrels will leave them alone after I set them out. In my greenhouse I have lettuce, spinach, cilantro, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and onions growing but they are tiny and it will be a while before any of them are ready to set out.
Hey Dawg I found something that works great for making the support for hoops. It is gray plastic conduit. It will bend great without breaking yet is much stronger and supports better than the black flexible pipe. I just cut off the female end of the ten foot piece and then just stick it in one side of the bed and bend it over and push it down on the other side. It will save you a lot of work setting up a hoop to protect your stuff in the winter. I wish I didn't have to have plastic covered hoops for the winter but there are always days here that are just too cold for the frost cloths which are so much easier to deal with.
So far I have dug a nice batch of sweet potatoes and will surely get more when I clear out the rest of my peppers and dig the ones growing under them. I don't cure mine and they seem to keep fine. I just wash the dirt off right after picking them and leave them drying under my shed and spray them every day for a few days before storing them in buckets or net bags. We have been eating them for a few weeks. A friend of ours showed us a neat way to cook them and since we learned how to prepare them that way we haven't baked a whole one in two years. Just take a potato peeler and peel them good and then cut them in slices around a half inch thick and lay them on some foil in a baking pan. We brush the foil with some melted butter then brush butter on the slices and then salt and pepper them and they bake really fast. We like to bake them at about 400 degrees so they get a bit of a light crust on the edges but it sure isn't neccessary. You can also sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon if you like them really sweet. It is a great way to use up the potatoes that are damaged when digging them so you don't have to worry about them spoiling when storing them. It is also a good way to use those monster potatoes that you sometimes get that are just too large to bake. I have one of those now and it is about 5 or 6 pounds and over a food long and nearly as big around as a football. We are saving that one for when we have a good bit of company because it will probably feed around ten people. Looks like it will be served at Thanksgiving.
Bill