Community gardens are everywhere, from Alaska and the Yukon to Puerto Rico and the Florida Keys.. So, while the organizing part of community gardens has a lot in common regardless of climate, the gardening part is very different. All gardeners are applied ecologists, and we have to grow where we're planted.
With a cold front roaring into the North, many gardeners are well past using row covers now (or am I wrong?)
Down here in North Carolina, I'm still covering my crops, using row cover fabric (Reemay and Agribon are well known brands) over hoops for #9 wire. It's a very useful appropriate technology. Though growth has slowed or stopped due to insufficient light - Elliot Coleman's 'Persephone days' - they keep the quality higher especailly on leafy crops. I'm liking the Batavia-type lettuces, always do, and komatsuma var. Summerfest, which turns out to also be winterfest.
So, cover up, oh say Zone 7 and south, and you can keep eating from the garden. And maybe that works further north too?
One thing that has happened, though - don't see as many folks out in the community garden right now. On the other hand - safely distanced and through our masks, of course, gardeners aint' dumbies - it makes for some good garden gossip, since one person hears a story then passes it on.
So, anybody else using row covers in December?
Don
in Charlotte
Comment on myself - Law: Plants can't read. They don't know Greek mythology, Hades schmades, and don't realize they can't grow at less than 10 hrs sunlight per day, aka the Persephone days. My komatsuma and chard seem to just keep trucking, and I have a very big 'instant collard' (Senposei, recommended by Doug Jones, a fine NC gardeners who works with Queen of all Extension Agents Debbie Roos over in Chatham County.) So, OK, we aren't Maine, where Mr. Coleman did much of his growing. Anyway - plants have a different intelligence than humans, not more or less just different, but they don't read, and don't always know what we tell them they ought to do.