SEPTEMBER BLOG

SEPTEMBER BLOG

There’s oodles of crops ready to harvest in September, including onions, potatoes, runner beans, courgettes, autumn-fruiting raspberries, tomatoes and apples.

• Sow hardy annuals, such as cerinthes, ammi, scabiosa and cornflowers, for flowers early next summer
• Collect ripe seeds from your favorite flowers and store in labelled envelopes, ready to sow in spring
• Plant up containers for autumn interest, using cyclamen, pot mums, pansies, heucheras and other colorful bedding plants.
• Bring any houseplants that you moved outside over summer back indoors, before temperatures start to drop
• Lift, divide and replant congested clumps of perennials, such as achilleas, once they finish flowering
• Fill any gaps with late-flowering perennials, such as sedums, to provide nectar for pollinating insects into autumn
• Plant spring bulbs including daffs, hyacinths, bluebells and crocus and pots and in flower beds.
• Take cuttings from fuchsias, salvias and pelargoniums
• Keep summer bedding flowering in hanging baskets and pots until the first frosts by deadheading and feeding regularly
• Trim conifer hedges to neaten them up and control height.
• Leave sunflower seed heads in place for birds to feed on
• Now is a good time to sow a green manure, such as grazing rye and vetch, over any earth that is going be left bare over winter – it will suppress weeds and will add nutrients when dug into the soil in spring.
• Now is time to start sowing the vegetables that will provide valuable winter harvests and earlier spring and summer pickings. You can sow leafy veg such as spring cabbages and spinach, winter salads, broad beans and peas for earlier harvests next spring, onions, shallots, garlic and quick-growing crops such as turnips and radish.