September in the Garden
For nature, in the garden, Autumn is a time for sowing and scattering seeds. Flowers and plants have been growing all summer and most are starting to fruit. The gardener likes to collect their bounty and celebrate how well the earth has rewarded their toil.
Plants like to spread those same seeds into the ground to reproduce the following year. Many of our native plant seeds need to rest and germinate in the ground over winter to have the best crop the following year. So, Autumn is a good time to plant wildflower seeds for the bees next year and if you want a good crop of sweet peas, onion sets, shallots and garlic then it's good to plant those now too.
Plenty of plants are still growing and producing leafy vegetables for Autumn cropping. But gardeners are always looking ahead to the following season and preparing for them. The daily struggle to water, feed and deadhead comes to the end at last!
A good way to keep your vegetable patch productive throughout the autumn and winter months is to plant vegetables like sprouts, kale, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and leeks ready for your Christmas lunch. The soil can be improved by digging in the compost from your compost heap. This also gives insects a good place to overwinter.
In September, you can seize the last opportunity to repair your lawn. Remove thatch and moss by scarifying the lawn. And use an aerator to reduce compaction and improve drainage. Overfeed the lawn and feed it. You may like to use a biological pest control to fight any lawn pests at the same time.
You can plant the last crop of salad leaves for a late crop before the soil cools down. You will be harvesting tomatoes, beans and peppers.
September is also the month that we start to put our gardens ’to bed’ for the winter, but wildlife prefers a less than tidy garden. Many of the smaller creatures need somewhere to overwinter. Some of the larger animals, like hedgehogs like to hide in the dying back foliage and feed off the slugs and larvae hiding there.
House plants should be moved back indoors and other tender plants into the greenhouse as the days start to get noticeably shorter before the first frosts. These can be replaced in the borders or in pots by colourful winter flowering pansies, primroses, forget me nots, cyclamen, violas and of course bulbs freshly planted for a colourful spring show.
We all love to see bright early spring flowers like dancing daffodils, vibrant tulips and pure white snowdrops that remind us of the promise of warmer and longer days ahead. They can be planted under trees, in the grass, in pots and your borders, as long as the soil is deep enough to plant them at about three times the depth of the height of the bulb. Also, September is a good time to plant spring bulbs as gifts to brighten up Christmas.