We’re fast approaching when the Earth’s tilt sees the Sun crossing the Equator toward the South, where it will only start its return journey on the 23rd of December (the start of winter). The second annual equinox, on September 23rd, marks the start of the cold half of the year, beginning with autumn.
Each month’s Jobs-to-Do article has a standard format, and this one is no different:
- Garden preparation jobs to do.
- Garden maintenance jobs.
- Vegetable gardening jobs to do.
- Fruit garden jobs to do.
- Indoor and container gardening projects.
- Ornamental garden jobs to do.
- A summary of what gardeners should focus on.
Garden Preparation Jobs to Do
Gardeners are wrapping up the gardening year and preparing for winter. Winter is a miracle that gives plants an ideal environment for converting stored starches to sugars, an essential ingredient to boost post-dormancy revival. Without winter, there is no spring growth, fruit trees and berry bushes won’t produce fruit and growth potential will be interrupted.
Several crops do well in winter, including garlic, turnips, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, and spinach. Brussel sprouts and turnips harvested in winter taste much better; they may even become your favorites.
Cover Crops
Studies have demonstrated that utilizing cover crops in crop rotation can enhance soil characteristics in various ways. It is recommended to include cover crops in rotation schemes, such as those that die off in winter, those that flourish in spring, and those that suit summer fallow periods.
Consider potential species’ hardiness and biomass production when planting cover crops from fall to spring. Winter annuals like winter rye are dependable and produce large amounts of biomass by spring. They work well for subsequent warm-season cash crops and no-till/zone-till systems. Combining several winder hardy plant species will provide the best soil health outcomes.
Winter-killed cover crops like Sudan grass provide significant ground cover over the winter if seeded early, while low-residue winter-killed cover crops like forage radish, oat, and field pea allow for early-season small-seeded crops and are suitable for limited tillage.
Late summer-seeded cover crops are typically planted after a vegetable crop has been harvested, around one to two months before the first frosts arrive (usually from mid-August to mid-September, depending on the location). There are different options for winter cover crops like rye or oats, which can be planted early to generate more growth in the fall. If there is enough time left in the season, annual ryegrass, forage radish, hairy vetch, and different types of Brassica cover crops can also be used.
Leaf Mold Preparations
There are many ways to manage leaves in Fall. You could mulch them with a mulching mower, collect them with a mower, blow or rake them into heaps, or use a vac-blower to shred, collect, and store them for later use. Whatever way you choose, they’re a fabulous resource.
Prepare a cubic yard bin to collect leaves for composting during winter. My technique, discussed below, can have leaf mold compost ready by early spring, boosting your garden for spring and summer production.
Garden Maintenance Jobs
To control weeds, consider refurbishing your mulch and adding leaves and other materials to your compost pile. Store your manure in a covered area to avoid nutrient leaching. Water deeply and thoroughly to prevent drought stress, especially for new transplants.
Use row covers to control flea beetles, leafminers, and cabbage maggots in your fall crops. When you plant your seeds, protect them and seal the edges with soil to keep out the cabbage maggot fly which lays its eggs at the base of young seedlings.
Rotating your fields prevents flies from emerging under the row covers. For fall turnips and rutabagas, use a non-heating row cover like Proteknet during August and early September to protect against cabbage maggots.
Spun-bonded row covers can trap too much heat and reduce yield and root quality. Natural enemies can usually keep aphids at bay, so it’s best to avoid placing row covers over crops with aphids present. This will exclude natural enemies and lead to outbreaks of aphids under the cover.
Soil Health Tasks – September
Leaf mold is the fungal decomposition of leaves in a mainly anaerobic environment. I make a hybrid of leaf mold (fungal) with added nitrogen, water, and air. You want to create an environment where microorganisms can flourish to reconstitute the leaves into soil-benefitting leaf mold.
By adding a little magic in the form of nitrogen, uric acid, water, and oxygen, you have a prized soil enhancer. To make the magic quicker, try to prevent too much heat from escaping by making your piles higher and protecting the pile from wind and rain. Even the hybrid version of leaf mold gets less hot than bacteria-driven aerobic decomposition processes.
How Do You Make Leaf Compost?
Like all composting processes, there are five essential ingredients – but we add a sixth in leaf mold composting.
- Carbon for the microorganisms
- Nitrogen for the microorganisms
- Uric acid for the fungi and is rich in nitrogen
- Water increases the mobility of microorganisms and acts as an energy supply line. Water also helps regulate temperatures and provides fungi with oxygen and hydrogen.
- Oxygen to help with the oxidation process of the carbon-releasing CO2
- Heat speeds up the process. Much of the heat is self-generated, and our role is to help prevent that generated heat from escaping.
The composting process is accelerated if we increase the available surface area exposed; the more place upon which microorganisms can act, the faster the decomposition. Shred the leaves before adding them to your compost pile – I shred mine four times before they are fine enough – generally, I use the mower.
You’ll need the following to create a leaf mold:
- Lots and lots of shredded leaves – enough to create a pile of no less than a 3-foot cube. This is about 40 garbage bags of leaves
- Some* moist soil taken from a wooded area
- Some* horse manure – good but not essential
- Some urine mixed with water – urine is rich in uric acid – a rich form of nitrogen. Ideally, you’ll make a four-gallon mix, which I will explain below.
- A bin that can hold a cubic yard of leaves. Look at my video on making leaf mold and see what I did. Alternatively, use a 1-ton bulk bag. They’re great for collecting leaves and as a holding unit for leaf mold/compost production.
- A couple of sheets of wet newspaper.
*The some referred to above is about a heaped spade full – or half a 4-gallon plastic shopping bag
Making a Nitrogen-Rich Wetting Agent
To make a wetting agent loaded with nitrogen and microorganisms, you will need the following:
- A cotton bag or a commercial horticultural compost tea bag
- 5-cups of horse manure
- 5-cups of nutrient-rich soil from a wooded area
- A 2-gallon bucket filled with water and topped up with 2-cups of urine
Place the horse manure and soil in the compost tea bag and soak in the water/urine mix for 48 hours. Pumping air into the mixture will speed up the diffusion and proliferation of microorganisms in the solution. The product is a nitrogen- and microorganisms-rich water solution that radically speeds up decomposition.
Vegetable Gardening Jobs to Do
For optimal growth, cool-season vegetables thrive in temperatures of 60 to 80°F (16 to 27°C) but can deteriorate in hot weather. If you want to harvest them in the fall, consider replanting them mid-summer.
Hardy vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, onions, lettuce, peas, radish, spinach, and turnips can withstand daytime temperatures as low as 40°F and may survive frost. Plant them as soon as the soil is sufficiently dry in the spring.
Semi-hardy vegetables like beets, carrots, cauliflower, parsley, parsnips, potatoes, and Swiss chard grow best with minimum daytime temperatures of 40 to 50°F (4 – 10°C) but are less tolerant of frosty nights. To ensure optimal growth, refer to the table below for soil temperature and aim for drier soil.
To ensure your peppers and tomatoes aren’t damaged by frost, it’s best to harvest them when they’re fully mature. Although frost may arrive in November, it’s better to be prepared.
You can also harvest herbs and dry them in a cool, dry place for later use. The mild weather is perfect for planting or transplanting crops, including beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, collards, lettuce, mustard, onions, radishes, spinach, and turnips.
Additionally, you can plant a second round of fall crops like collards, turnips, cabbage, mustard, and kale.
Vegetable Garden Tasks – September
I love autumn – September is the month I met my wife, and the changing seasons bring back fond memories. In the garden, early autumn is almost as active as early spring – depending on where you are. Most of the work is for early September in most parts of the country.
It’s an excellent time to divide and replant Egyptian (top-setting) onions. Consider planting radishes, lettuce, spinach, and other greens in a cold frame to extend the fall harvest. Regularly picking broccoli will encourage the growth of side shoots.
To help Brussels sprout plants grow plumper sprouts, pinch off their tops. Collect herbs now to freeze or dry for winter use. When cauliflower heads are the size of a golf ball, tie leaves around them. Remove any small tomatoes that won’t mature to direct energy towards ripening full-sized ones.
Plant spinach to yield a spring crop by overwintering it beneath mulch — it’s one of the hardiest crops.
Vegetable Planting
Below is a list of vegetables and their respective hardiness and days to maturity:
| Crop | Days to maturity | Cold hardiness |
| Basil | 30 to 60 | Frost sensitive |
| Beets | 50 to 60 | Survives upper 20°F (-3°C) |
| Bush Beans | 45 to 65 | Frost sensitive |
| Broccoli | 50 to 70 | Survives light frost |
| Brussels sprouts | 90 to 100 | Survives lower 20°F (-5°C) |
| Cabbage | 50 to 90 | Survives lower 20°F (-5°C) |
| Cauliflower | 60 to 80 | Survives light frost |
| Cilantro | 60 to 70 | Survives light frost |
| Collard greens | 40 to 65 | Survives lower 20°F (-5°C) |
| Garlic | Harvest next summer | Overwinters in ground |
| Green onion | 60 to 70 | Survives upper 20°F (-3°C) |
| Kale | 40 to 65 | Survives lower 20°F (-5°C) |
| Kohlrabi | 50 to 60 | Survives light frost |
Fruit Garden Jobs to Do
When picking pears, it’s best to do so before they are fully mature. For optimal ripening, store them in a cool and dark basement. Any damaged or fallen fruits should be either buried or thrown away. Look for sticky masses formed by borers on the peach tree trunks below the soil level. To remove the borers, use a fine wire to probe the holes.
It’s time to tidy up your summer fruiting raspberries. Remove the canes that have already fruited and tie the new shoots that will bear fruit next year. Remember your summer fruiting strawberries as well.
Cut off the foliage about an inch from the ground while clearing and weeding as you go. If you have any runners, you can plant them to replace any 3-year-old plants that need to be replaced now.
Indoor And Container Gardening Projects
Prepare your indoor plants for winter by trimming protruding roots and controlling their growth. Make sure to inspect them for any pests and treat them accordingly. Also, remember to bring the houseplants you had outside for the summer indoors at least a month before you turn on the heat.
You can now pick herbs such as parsley, rosemary, chives, thyme, and marjoram from your yard and plant them in pots for indoor cultivation during the winter season.
If you want your poinsettias to bloom for Christmas, you can transfer them indoors and place them on a sunny windowsill. To achieve the desired hue, they must be kept in a cool, dark environment with no light for 14 hours each night. This process should be done for 6-10 weeks.
Ornamental Garden Jobs to Do
Flower Garden Tasks – September
It’s currently the ideal season to cultivate evergreens. Annuals can be cut for overwintering cuttings. To plant tulips, keep them in cold and dark conditions until late October. This is also the perfect time to divide perennials, especially those that bloom in spring.
Before replanting, enhance the soil with peat moss or compost. Peonies can also be split during this season. Be sure to avoid deep planting and select a sunny location. Once the gladioli leaves turn yellow, pull them up and let them dry in a well-ventilated area before husking.
September Lawn Care Jobs
As you help your lawn recover from the summer heat and prepare it for the extremes of winter, autumn is frequently the busiest season on the lawn care calendar – a time to make significant repairs.
Adjust your mowing routine to your region’s rainfall figures – more rain, shorter, frequent cuts. Keep the grass clean of leaves and brush any worm casts back into the lawn if you see an increased worm activity. Gather the leaves to make leaf mold compost.
September is excellent for deep scarification, rigorous raking, and compaction relief through hollow tine aeration to eliminate grass thatch. After scarifying, make sure you have a good recovery program in place. Fill in any bare spots left by these invasive treatments, followed by a top dressing.
Fertilizing cool-season grasses is recommended. Feed in the late summer or early fall, six weeks before the first frost date in your location. Between now and December, you can submit up to three applications. Stay within the fertilizer manufacturer’s suggested rates.
Post-emergent broadleaf weeds can be controlled, and growth boosted with spot treatments or weed ‘n feed solutions that include fertilizer and pesticide.
Start sowing or sodding cool-season grasses in the fall. Raked, dethatched, or core-aerified seedbeds should be fertilized and planted. Maintain moist but not damp grass in newly planted areas. Now is the time to top-dress lawns with compost.
This should be done after aeration. Lawns that have only recently been seeded should be trimmed once they are at least 2 or 3 inches tall. Reduce mower blade heights to conventional mowing heights gradually, removing no more than a third of the grass blade per cut.
A Summary of What Gardeners Should Focus On
This month is a great time to plant spring flowering bulbs such as daffodils, tulips, crocuses, and hyacinths. It’s also an excellent time to add new landscape plants. If you have peonies, this is the perfect time to transplant or plant them. Remember to continue planting pansy plants.
Consider planting cover crops like annual rye, barley, and wheat if you need a fall vegetable garden. You can even start salad vegetables in a cold frame and enjoy them throughout winter. You can plant lettuce, green onions, carrots, radishes, and most leafy greens inside the cold frame.
To prepare for next year’s gardening season, there are a few things you can do now. Cut back herbaceous perennials once frost has killed the tops. If you plan on moving any trees or plants next spring, root-prune them now. Divide rhubarb and any crowded clumps of spring and summer flowering perennials, such as daffodils, peonies, and Shasta daisies.
In addition, take soil samples from your plant beds and vegetable garden for testing. As the leaves begin to fall, start filling your compost bin. If you have yet to plant a cover crop or plan to, you can till organic material like tree leaves into your vegetable garden soil. Prepare bird feeders for the winter months—lastly, store summer bulbs like gladioli, dahlia, and caladium before the frost hits.
This month, it’s essential to dig up your sweet potatoes before frost damages the plants. If you want spring flowering bulbs in the dead of winter, pot them early this month and place them in your refrigerator. After twelve weeks, take them out and enjoy their beauty in the warmth of your home.
