Thanks so much! That is exactly what I wanted to be reassured of. The supplier I'm looking at carries Kennebecs, so maybe I'll give them a try.

Generally after the frost zaps the tops, but really, you can do it any time now. I doubt temps are warm enough for them to really grow much more. You can dig in there carefully and see what's under there. If they're big enough for your liking, go ahead and harvest.

Dorothy, That is a shockingly bad harvest, and not at all up to your usual standards. I guess the plants used up most of their energy recovering from being eaten? I hope that next year will be better. I dug about half my sweet potatoes this afternoon and it isn't a uniformly great harvest, but some varieties have produced fairly well though others didn't. We've been in drought endlessly and I know I didn't water them enough. I planted a lot of varieties that were new to me this year, so didn't know what kind of yield to expect from the ones I haven't grown before. Their soil was rock hard when I dug, and we had a lot of rain in October so I thought it would have a lot more moisture in it. I grew them in a new raised bed we built this spring just for potatoes. It is all above ground and lined with hardware cloth to keep the voles out. I don't think I have the soil quite right yet, so expect yields from that bed will improve as the soil improves. Clearly the bed drains too quickly. I'll have to work on that. Larry, Just once I'd like to have wet soil that stays wet for longer than a day. The deer already ate all the sweet potato vines I threw on the compost pile, so when they couldn't find anything on the pile they wanted today, they came into the yard and were in the chicken run eating hen scratch....brazen little thieves that they are. It is a big shock to be walking towards the chicken coop with a bucket of hen scratch in your hand and to see three deer standing there looking at that bucket of food with lust and longing in their eyes. I'm trying to get everything possible harvested before the frost hits us on Saturday morning, and today I finished harvesting the peppers, yanking out the plants as I went along. Even when you're on pepper overload, it still is sad on the day when you yank out the plants. I'm gonna miss them. I postponed tearing out any plants to speak of until yesterday, and I'm already not liking all those bare spots in the garden. I'd been yanking one thing here and one thing there, but since everything was overgrown, nothing looked bare. After all the plants I took out yesterday and today, there's now big bare spots. I'd like to get all the garden cleanup done before next week's rain, but doubt that I'll manage to get all of it done that quickly. Dawn

You know what they say about assumptions. ;-) Cracking and splitting can develop at any time, at any stage of growth. But once it happens it's done. That is why consistent soil moisture levels throughout the season is so important regardless of the crop. And it has little to do with how we as people perceive the weather. We often make the mistake of evaluating weather/climate effects in terms of how it affects us - as a person. We're hot, we're dry, we're wet, it's raining on me so the plants are getting watered enough, etc. - when the effects on plants are quite different. The only way we know what is really going on with the plants is with dirty hands deep in the soil. Dave