Labor Day has passed, and the temperatures are dropping. The garden is yielding plenty of healthy, delicious food.

The warm season plants are nearing the end of their cycle this year, with fruit on the vines and tubers or bulbs in the ground.

This is an ideal time to plant cool-season crops such as fall rye, winter wheat and perennial clover to continue building roots in the soil and support soil life.

If this isn't comfortable for you, simply mulch the soil and keep it covered. Leaves, pine needles, wood chips, straw and wild rice chaff all make excellent mulches to keep the soil warm and protected. The worms, bacteria, fungi and other creatures will benefit from your efforts.

Mulching also helps suppress cool-season grasses like quack grass, which thrive in these temperatures and ten

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