What to do in Your Garden this month
September brings a season of change. The kids have started back to school and the summer garden is starting to wane. This is a great time to renew your garden with a fresh crop of fall plants to extend your season and to continue to grow your own food. If you are a new gardener this is a great time to start!
September also brings generous crops of vine ripened, home grown tomatoes. If you haven’t already experienced the joys of home canning, why not start now? You’ll smile every time you open a jar of home canned tomatoes to make a beautiful pasta sauce in the midst of winter.
Follow this link for great home canning resources, instruction and recipes: National Center for Home Food Preservation
What to plant?
In September you can directly sow beets, garlic, carrots, fava beans, peas, cilantro, spinach, radishes and Asian greens. You can also start lettuce, sweet peas, brassicas, Asian greens indoors for planting. Plants ready for transplanting are lettuce, brassicas, fennel, leeks, chard, kale and nettles.
Flower and Herbs that can be directly sown in September are cold tolerant flowers such as Calendula, Viola, Larkspur, Clarkia, poppies, all California wildflowers, Nigella, Limonium, Borage, Dianthus, Centaureas, wallflowers, Love-in-a-mist, Snapdragon, etc. Flowers and herbs that can be started from seed are all of the above including medicinals and biodynamics such as Yarrow, Chamomile, Dandelion, Nettles, Lavender, Thyme, Sage, Valerians, Echinacea, etc.
Other activities for September are cleaning-up and composting fallen fruit, mulch perennials, make compost, start sheet mulching, continue to preserve the harvest and as always, weed!
For more Gardener's Tips, please click Greater Hopland Planting Guide (Peter Huff and Kate Frey's Monthly Planting Calendar for Inland Mendocino, also found at the "How to - Grow Food" page on The Garden's Project Website).
Other September Activities…
Clean up spent summer plants and weed planting areas to get ready for fall planting. Amend your soil as necessary with fresh organic material to boost soil structure and add nutrients. This is also the time to compost fruits and vegetables that are past their prime in order to reduce the attraction of garden pests. Avoid adding any plants, fruits or vegetables that are diseased to your compost pile.
When in doubt, there is a tremendous body of knowledge about gardening in California, provided by University of California Cooperative Extension. This site, geared toward the home gardener can be found at http://cagardenweb.ucdavis.edu/.
No comments:
Post a Comment