All the Gardening Jobs You Should Do in September
There’s usually a sense of missed deadline in the garden at this time of year: I’m rushing to harvest, till, and prune, turning over beds, and trying to get ahead of fall cleanup, which makes me hate the arrival of September . But all that work of cleaning, collecting seeds, sowing and changing beds now will ensure that your garden will be in good shape for next year. Here are all the gardening jobs you should do in September.
Harvest
I consciously prefer this word to the word harvest this year. After a summer of everyone I know being affected by fungi and viruses in the garden, this is a reminder that harvesting your garden is not only for our own benefit, but also for removing disease vectors from our beds. After years of “chop and throw” evangelism (where you cut down dead plants at ground level and leave them to compost in place), a common topic of conversation among gardening groups has become the need to ensure that yard waste is removed from garden beds and prevent the spread of soil-borne diseases. So this year I’m trying to get into the beds, chop up the plants and remove them. Sick plants go in the trash (not compost, not even city compost) and healthy plants go in my compost pile. Even though they will end up in roughly the same place after composting (back in the beds), the warmth of the compost pile will kill off many of the viruses that may be present there.
Collecting seeds
Instead of leaving fruit to rot in your garden beds, it’s a good idea to be more careful about which plants to propagate next year. The solution is to collect seeds . In recent years I have become much more serious about this matter. While the cost of the seeds is a great justification for this, finances are not my main motivation. By choosing the plants that do best in my yard and doing this year after year, I am essentially creating my own variety of these fruits that will do well in my yard. After all, it was already thriving in those conditions.
Some plants make it easier for you, such as green beans, sunflowers, kidney beans and peas. They dry outside and appear before you, waiting to be picked up. The second group of vegetables requires more patience: celery, lettuce, parsley, cilantro, cabbage, fennel and broccoli. These vegetables need to be allowed to produce seeds, which means they bloom and those flowers eventually produce seeds. Once the seeds appear, you collect them. They won’t be dry – you’ll need to spread them out on a plate and place them in an area with good ventilation (I place them in front of a fan). Then come the nightshades: tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. These are the most expensive seeds and are worth saving. Find the best specimen of the healthiest plant fruit to sacrifice. Cut it open and scoop out all the seeds, placing them and the accompanying “slime” surrounding the seeds in a jar with a little water and allowing this water to ferment for a day or two. Then drain the seeds in a colander on a sheet of paper towel and dry as you would other seeds. It’s okay if the seeds stick to the paper towel – it doesn’t matter when it’s time to germinate.
Flower seeds follow the same pattern. All flowers produce seeds in different ways, from the poppy, which stores its tiny seeds in dried pods, to the foxglove, which shakes its seeds down the length of its stem. For any flower for which you want to save seeds, at the end of the season, look at the flowers and look for seeds or search online for specific ways to save those seeds.
Seed your green spaces
Most places have a good combination of heat and rain in September, making it ideal for germinating seeds. If you have a traditional lawn , now is the time to take advantage of its conditions, but since preparation will take time, start now. The same goes for organic lawns : if you’re going to plant clover or other groundcovers, order your seeds now.
Change beds
As you begin to bring the summer harvest to an end, you have to decide what to do with the beds for the fall and winter. I’m a big proponent of all-season gardening, which means you can plant fall and winter crops now. But there is a strong argument for giving your beds a rest every now and then, even if you only have one or two beds in your area. In your holiday beds, keep them weed-free and then give them a hefty dose of compost and some myco powder (a mycorrhizal inoculant that will spawn mycelium in your soil). Then plant a cover crop that suits your bed. There are oilseed radishes if you need to loosen the soil, beans which add a hefty dose of nitrogen to the soil, clover and grasses. Your local nursery will have options suitable for your area. When spring arrives, you’ll trim the plants, let the roots compost, and plant summer crops in the restored bed.
Harvest berries
While your entire yard will be spruced up in the coming months, I’ll definitely start with the berry arbor. You should do this pruning while you can still tell which vines are green (new growth) and brown (second year shoots that need to be pruned). I tidy up the rows (that is, pluck out any vines that have sprouted out of place), chop everything to an even height of about six feet, and put all the vines back into the trellis. Doing this now will ensure a much more abundant and affordable fruit harvest next year.
General cleaning
You may get a head start on other fall tasks, but the reality is that most people are too busy tending to the vegetables and fruits in their yard. There will be plenty of time next month.