September Garden Chores - What I'm Really Doing
Edibles
Finally, I can rip out the remains of my truly sad crop of summer vegetables (or technically fruit – whatever) and try my luck at fall crops. This thing about growing successive veg crops over one season is, honestly, a bit confusing/overwhelming for this newbie, so I kept it simple by picking up whatever starts I can find. No planning, no research, just impulse-buying a few 6-packs of plants I enjoy eating. In my case that means skipping the salad greens in favor of cooked greens, and here’s the selection: red cabbage, ‘Red Giant’ mustard, ‘Georgia’ collards, and plain old spinach.
I planted a few of the red cabbage in the pots on my front porch, where they’re mixed potager-style with ornamentals. The rest are in pots on my sunny deck, where I discover an advantage to container gardening – I can move the container in or out of full sun, as required. So when the collards wilted after their first exposure to sun, I could just roll them into the shade for the rest of the day. So glad those larger containers have wheels!
In the rest of the garden September is still about watering and weeding. Though the temperatures may finally be dropping, but we need to keep watering the shrubs and trees through the first hard frost so that they can survive the winter. Evergreens especially need to go into winter well hydrated. They’re the plants that rarely wilt, giving us the sign that they need watering; they seem to just up and die. And if you see your evergreens dropping their old leaves or needles, not to worry – they just do that this time of year.
On the plus side, there’s no need to fertilize or prune now. In fact, it’s better NOT to because both will stimulate new growth, which wouldn’t have time to harden off before it gets really cold. That lovely new growth would quickly be killed.
But my favorite September chore of all is, as you can probably guess, buying new plants! So I’m naturally frustrated by the practically-full state of my garden, as it offers so few opportunities to do my favorite thing. This fall my primary acquisitions are some creeping sedums, which I’m using to replace my lawn. (Photos of those soon – after they fill in a bit.) And I’ll be picking up a few of those happy mums for the pots on my front porch.
I’m starting to remove some of the rattier leaves on perennials (I’m looking at you, hostas), but I leave the coneflower seeds heads alone until early spring because the goldfinches literally flock to them. And I’m itching to move lots of perennials, because constant tweaking is what perennial beds are FOR, right? It’s fine to move the thick-rooted plants like daylilies and hostas now but for most perennials I’ll have to wait until it cools down and promises to stay cooled down. So having waited all summer to implement my newest redesign, I wait some more.
Bulbs
It suddenly occurs to me that I have bulbs to buy soon and I’d better decide what I want. (Again, note the lack-of-planning theme.) When I DO sit down to plan my bulb purchases it’ll help to go through photos like this of my garden in spring.
Lawn
Now’s the time to seed or overseed, and I covered the details of seeding here. It’s also time to feed your lawn, and that deserves a blog post of its own - coming later this week.
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Enjoy your garden post
Hi Susan (and any other more experienced gardeners than me),
I loved reading and seeing your pictures on this blog. I’m trying to grow things in our backyard, since gardening seems to make me happy (and keep me sane, haha).
My latest battle I’m contending with is chipmunk and squirrel digging. I’m noticing (not so) lovely divots in my garden and even my seedlings! I don’t have a cat or dog, so that’s ruled out. Wondering if you (and others) may have suggestions?
I’m truly a desperate woman!
Thanks,
Lisa
Omigosh! Bulbs. I forgot all
Omigosh! Bulbs. I forgot all about buying bulbs - it was on my list to buy snow drops and plant them where I will actually see them in the spring. As for lawns, I NEVER feed my lawn. If it goes brown I know it will green up in the autumnal rains. I hope we do get autumnal rains.