In soms locales, how much can one expect a layer of leaves to be taken down by worms when temperatures are near the freezing mark. Any self-respecting worm will find the temperature up above downright too cold for his mucousy hide...and will want to find a hole...a deep one. Since temperature does influence how a thing decomposes, how much can one expect a pile of leaves to compost down between now and when the pile freezes solid. How many leaves does one expect to be there --piled up on the perennial beds, after any decent fall wind. AS many do suggest, a clean garden is a disease free garden. Leaves, as maybe having come down early....for what reason...are now lying on the lawn....and if the lawn has any diseases enshrined in the soil, that is surely now part of the leaves which someone suggests be put over our beds. A pile of leaves.....how much is a pile...how much should one expect to use in the fall and how much should one pick up. Leaves around strawberries....never heard that one...straw..yes...straw is very good to mulch strawberries. Leaves would the last thing I'd want to put around my strawberries. Leaves belong off the lawn....in the compost pile or in bags for later use as leaf mould.

Nate, it sounds like the following is too late, since your work has already begun, but for what it's worth: We had 4 new roofs (entire house) and everything that that entailed (remove old roofs, put on new + gutters & downspouts) and new stucco siding on one side of the house's addition (hence, remove all old stucco, too). Contractor also created a new profile for the eave over that side of the house; also made and installed a copper overhang for the window on that side. Not all of this was done at the same time; still, a lot of construction materials and debris. Used the same contractor and his small crew for everything. The crew was able to do the roofing job by accessing all the roofs from the patio; the main issue was roof debris that ended up on the ground. They were exceedingly careful and neat but even now, I do find the occasional nail and bits of roofing material. For the stucco work, however, they needed to erect and safely access scaffolding. I asked the contractor to try to protect a daylily bed directly under the side of the house needing that work. For various reasons, I couldn't dig up the plants in it, even though it contained some daylilies I value a lot (eg LAST SNOWFLAKE, NEON FLAMINGO, COWBOY SCARF, MABOU, Jack Carpenter patterns, and more), so he set up the scaffolding on a large piece of plywood that was placed on cinder blocks on either end of the bed (and with two blocks supporting the mid part of the wood). The crew had to access the scaffolding of course, so one end of the bed got badly trampled & the soil very compacted. Even so, given what had to be done to the house, and the time they spent doing it, the daylilies sailed through everything in near perfect condition. There was a lot of bent and torn foliage, but it was late autumn anyway so that didn't matter. Plus, it was the crowns I'd been concerned about. We plan to use the same guys to paint the house's exterior next spring. Since I don't know exactly which month that will be, I expect to have to dig up the entire bed. Even so, I'll ask the contractor to once again place scaffolding on plywood on cinder blocks. The idea will be to protect the soil from compaction so that I can use that bed again as soon as the work is done.

If appearance is not a huge issue, you can make one out of old pallets, which you can usually scrounge up free. People I know of who have done this usually nail three pallets together to form three sides and then attach the fourth side, which is the front side, in a manner that allows it to be easily removed so they can turn the stuff in the pile. If appearance is an issue, you could still use the pallets, and plant a really fast growing vine, like morning glories, moonflowers, cypress vine, hyacinth beans, etc. They will grow up the outsides of the pallets and cover the whole thing in just a couple of months. Or, you can plant a perennial vine that would be slower growing, but permanent, and would perhaps make the bin area more attractive year-round. You'd want somthing that is not wildly invasive, so maybe something like American crossvine, passionflower, one of the hybird honeysuckles, or sweet autumn clematis. The clematis is a rampant grower, but blooms with lovely small scented white blossoms in August and is a delight to grow. If you want to be really adventurous, and get away with not turning the compost pile for months, create a Japanese tomato ring. I used the Japanese tomato rings (find instructions via google) for four years to enrich the ground where I now grow corn, beans, melons and pumpkins. My rings were large, about the size of one of those hard plastic kiddie wading pools you buy at Wal-Mart. I planted six tomato plants around each ring. I threw compost into the rings, including grass clippings and such (but NOT diseased tomato foliage) and the compost fed the tomato plants as it decomposed, and the tomato plants hid the compost pile. In the fall after the tomato plants were dead, I pulled them up. Then I unfastened the 4' tall woven-wire fencing that I had used to form the ring. (It was held together with big zip ties.) I raked out all the compost and tilled it into the ground in the fall. Then I reformed the ring and threw food scraps, leaves, etc. into it all winter. After several years of this, the soil was beautifully enriched and I was able to make vast quantities of compost with little effort while producing outrageous amounts of tomatoes. Do you belong to the Freecycle group for your city/region? If not, maybe you could give it a try. If you post that you are looking for materials to make a compost bin and then list what kinds of materials you are looking for, you might have someone in your area who is wanting to get rid of that same stuff. I am amazed at the kinds of things you see people giving away on freecycle. Have a great day and don't stress too much over it being deadline day. All that stress is bad for your health. :)

Larry, #1 I mulch early and heavily, putting 2-4" down as soon as I plant, and adding more as that decomposes and breaks down. #2 I believe it is the a combination of heat and drought. Sweet potatoes seem more bothered by a lack of moisture than by heat, at least up to a certain point. #3 Ignore them and don't give them any water or fertilizer and they should put more energy into forming tubers. As with so many other gardening issues, this is a hard problem to figure out. I think your issues are related more to the heat than to anything else though. Cooler temperatures should help your plants form more tubers, and I've often wondered if decreasing daylength signals the end of the season is coming and maybe makes them form more tubers. Sweet potatoes like poor soil but will grow in almost any soil. However, their production will vary with the kind of soil and how the crop is managed after it is planted. The crop, too, is at the mercy of drought and heat. Too much fertility gives you too much foliage and too few potatoes, so be sure you don't enrich the soil too much and that you don't over-fertilize at planting time. The late Dr. Sam Cotner, former head of Horticulture at Texas A&M University and author of "The Texas Vegetable Book" (now out of print), which is my gardening bible I refer to often (I should have it memorized by now) gives a top-notch description of how soil affects sweet potato output, and I'll paraphrase it here. Maybe something he says will provide some insight into what is going on with your sweet potatoes. He said these things about the relationship between soil and the sweet potato crop: --Sweet potatoes can be grown on a variety of soils, as long as the soils are well-drained --Sweet potatoes perform best in sandy loam --Sweet potatoes grown in poor, sandy soils tend to produce low yields of smooth, high-quality roots --Sweet potatoes grown in rich, heavy soils produce high yields of rough, poor-quality roots Drainage plays a role too, and this is where I get into trouble because much of my soil doesn't drain well, so I am limited in where I can put sweet potatoes. If your soil has poor drainage, whether the soil is rich or poor, you'll tend to get sweet potatoes that are cracked or misshapen or have rough skin..or some combination of all of those. Another thing I can think of that is not weather-related would be soil pH. Sweet potatoes do not perform well on soils that are very acidic or very alkaline. They do best on soils with a pH between 5.5 and 6.5. My unamended soil tests at 8.2 to 8.3 so in order to grow sweet potatoes I add peat moss to it instead of compost because peat moss is essentially "dead" and doesn't add a lot of fertility. It just makes the soil drain better and also lowers the pH because it is acidic. I save my good compost and manure for plants that like high-fertility soil. Why? Let me quote Dr. Cotner here: "Unlike most vegetable crops, sweet potatoes do not do better if high levels of organic matter are added to the soil." I know that this is a frustrating statement for a gardener to read because, in general, for most of the things we grow, adding high levels of organic matter gives us a better crop. There is one more thing. When sweet potato beds are unmulched, the plants commonly root into the soil. (In good moist weather this is especially true.) This is bad. By rooting into the soil they are using energy to form more roots and more topgrowth. You want for them to put their energy into forming tubers. So, every week or two, take a garden rake and move around the sweet potato foliage, disturbing it enough that it cannot root into the ground. I don't know if any of this helps. My gut feeling is that if you'll leave them alone from this point on and not water or feed them, they'll put more energy into forming tubers. I really think this year's heat is the biggest culprit, and the worst of the heat is about to go away unless the big cold front coming our way stalls out before it reaches us, and it is not supposed to do that. I have the best luck with sweet potatoes when I plant them and then totally ignore them until it is time to dig them. I always do mulch early and, in fact, very soon after planting in order to keep the weeds from sprouting around the freshly-planted slips. On my screen, your photo is pretty big, but you know that I don't take photos and post them so I can't tell you why it is showing up that big. I am sure someone who posts a lot of photos will be able to tell you though. Dawn