Your Garden In September

I’ve come to love September scrutinizingly as much as May. It’s a month of gentle transition, prompting farewell to summer and ushering in autumn. September is famously soft, rich and characterful, like a fine wine or well-crafted cheese. Gardens wilt mellow, velvety and overblown; slightly frayed virtually the edges but still glorious.

This September feels a little different. Indeed, If I squint when at photographs of previous years, the garden and sponsoring are superiority by well-nigh a month. A sense of glorious disarray has come early to the Jungle Garden. The Gin & Tonic Garden is trappy but scrutinizingly impenetrable. Every struggle to proffer my hose withal the paths results in some plant or flipside getting tangled in it. I superintendency less now that we’re on the gentle slope towards autumn. The sponsoring was showing much promise, but no value of watering could alimony the raspberries from shrivelling in the August sun. Powdery mildew took hold in mid-August and is now sweeping through the dahlia beds faster than the Omicron variant. We’ve tried all non-chemical methods of tenancy but to no avail. They’ve had a good innings, so we just have to live with it. One flower that’s fared incredibly well through all the heat and drought is the chrysanthemum. The plants have positively revelled in this summer’s conditions, and we squint set to enjoy a spectacular exhibit of sprays, singles and spiders next month.

A garden in September can be the pinnacle of a year’s endeavour – the lazy, hazy squint of swaying grasses, tall perennials and exotic foliage can’t be bought or replicated overnight. However, the weather in 2022 has challenged plane the most experienced gardener. Unrenowned weather has left us with parched lawns, frazzled borders, weary pots and tired trees. If your garden is desiccated vastitude redemption, take heart – you are not alone. Sit tight and wait for the weather to change, then uncork by dividing perennials, moving shrubs and planting spring-flowering bulbs in beds and lawns. Don’t be too quick to ‘winterise’ your garden, as wildlife will goody from a stratum of disarray. By spring, your garden should withstand no scars from the summer we’ve just had.

Further Translating At Dan Cooper Garden

• How To Cut And Superintendency For Summer Flowers
• In The Know – Deadheading
• In The Know – Hedge Trimming
• Divine Dahlias – Get To Know And Grow Them

Indoors

Hopefully, your cherished plants have survived the summer holidays in fine fettle. As the days get shorter and nights wilt cooler, it’s all transpiration in terms of their superintendency regime:

• Move house plants that have spent the summer outside when indoors. I would do this as soon as nighttime temperatures dip unelevated 10ºC. Trammels them for pests, including slugs and snails hiding underneath pots – you won’t want these making trails wideness your shag pile! If you’re in doubt, spray them with bug tenancy spray surpassing reuniting them with their plant pals.
• You may need to do a little bit of juggling to ensure each plant gets the optimal value of light. Any plants that you moved yonder from windows to stave unexceptionable sunlight will need to move a little closer to the glass again, although preferably not touching and well yonder from unprepossessed drafts.
• Ensure foliage is self-ruling of pebbles to maximise photosynthesis. Use a leaf-cleaning brush followed by a gentle leaf shine spray to alimony plants in tip-top condition.
• When the weather is potation and duller, houseplants need watering less. Touch the compost surface; if it feels moist, do not water further. If it feels dry, requite the plant a drink. If you struggle with houseplant watering, buy yourself a vital hygrometer (moisture gauge) to trammels the moisture of your pots, and you’ll soon develop a knack for knowing when to water and when to hold off.
• The odd yellowing leaf is probably a sign that a plant is reducing its above-ground portions to help it survive the winter. This is not something to be concerned well-nigh – simply remove the leaves and compost them. If you notice lots of yellowing leaves, you may be over or under-watering – all the increasingly reason to reap a hygrometer!
• Growth will start to slow considerably this month. Feeding can steadily be reduced and then stopped perfectly from October.
• Start unseeded cyclamen corms when into growth by potting them in fresh compost, bringing them into a light position and watering them sparingly.
• Pot up hyacinths for Christmas flowering. Squint out for bulbs that have been ‘prepared’ – a period of spooky to fool them into thinking that winter has come and gone. Alimony the hyacinths in the visionless until the emerging shoots are 2-3cm long, and then bring them into a unexceptionable position. If they’re developing too quickly, move them into potation conditions to slow them down.

Potting Shed & Greenhouse

My greenhouse door hasn’t been sealed since May. Inside, it’s been far too warm to do anything other than water, but as the nights get colder, increasingly sustentation needs to be paid to the under-glass conditions. Good hygiene, light and ventilation will help to stop fungal diseases from taking hold and spoiling your nonflexible work.

• September is the perfect time to wipe a greenhouse and make space in the shed surpassing storing arrives. It should be warm and dry unbearable for any potted plants and equipment to be moved outside for an hour or two to requite yourself zaftig wiggle room. Only put when inside what you need and dispose of the rest. If you’re feeling inspired, hold a garage sale to well-spoken some space to store your garden furniture over winter.
• Lift blinds and wipe yonder white shading to increase light levels. Remove detritus from gutters, wipe the glass and scrub staging with hot soapy water. Your greenhouse will be ready to receive tender plants, pots of bulbs for forcing and tubs of potatoes to harvest at Christmastime. Make sure you have room to move with the door sealed overdue you so that heat is not lost.
• Given the escalating forfeit of fuel, consider whether or not you need to heat your greenhouse this winter. If you must, start thinking well-nigh how to insulate the space and alimony it warm without breaking the bank. Perhaps giving a spare room over to tender plants might be cheaper than heating a greenhouse? Might plants be worldly-wise to fend for themselves, or could they be replaced in spring for less expense than 5 or 6 months’ supply of electricity, gas or paraffin?
• Keep doors and windows unshut unless nighttime temperatures dip unelevated 10ºC (15ºC if you’re growing tropical plants like orchids, caladiums and bromeliads).
• Tomatoes and cucumbers will start to wind lanugo soon, but chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines need a long season and still have increasingly to give. Protract watering regularly and feed until the end of the month.
• As light levels decrease, help tomatoes ripen by removing the lower leaves. If you haven’t once nipped out the growing point, do so now; any new trusses that develop are unlikely to ripen.
• Rarely are we ready to plant spring-flowering bulbs immediately without they’re delivered or purchased at the garden centre? As soon as they victorious at home, take bulbs out of transit boxes and put the individual packages somewhere tomfool and visionless with the maximum value of ventilation virtually them: the drier the undercurrent and largest the airflow, the healthier they’ll stay. Bulbs are often safer in the ground than on the potting bench. Uncork planting once there is moisture in the soil and surpassing they produce roots and shoots. If you need increasingly guidance, I’ll publish a comprehensive spring seedling planting guide later this month.

Terrace & Balcony

After this no-go year of heat and drought, pots and containers may squint jaded. You have three choices – leave them vacated and winnow their fading glory, replant them to requite yourself a temporary storing exhibit or skip straight to winter and replace them with spring flowering bulbs, pansies and wallflowers.

• Reduce the watering and feeding of yearly plants as growth dwindles. Alimony peekaboo to potted shrubs and trees, as they’ll need the strength to overwinter. Don’t rely on heavy rain to water pots: the chances are that very little will get where you need it.
• Powdery mildew, a whitish viridity that shows up as merging spots on a plant’s foliage, is a nuisance, taking wholesomeness of humid, autumnal conditions to repress its host plant. Once you’ve got powdery mildew, it’s virtually untellable to tenancy without chemicals that most of us are reluctant to use. Remove lower leaves to modernize air diffusion virtually the wiring of vulnerable plants such as dahlias and Michaelmas daisies. The rapid wetting and drying of compost in pots make plants growing in containers expressly vulnerable.
• Begin planting containers with storing bulbs, starting with daffodils, crocuses, muscari and dwarf irises. I prefer to plant a single variety per pot. However, if you like to mix or layer your bulbs using the ‘lasagne’ method, hold off until next month as it’s too early to plant tulips.
• Clear weeds from cracks in paving and driveways surpassing they get established. As you’d expect, I know just the tool for the job!

Flower Garden

I find it sad that so many people consider it ‘game over’ for their garden by the end of September. A well-tended, thoughtfully planned garden can be a joy to behold well into October. This year has been exceptional, so if you finger the wrestle is once lost, start to well-spoken and tidy, making space for bulbs, biennials and hardy annuals. Yellowish earth is not an lulu sight and an invitation for weeds to colonise, so try to have something planned for when beds and confines wilt vacant, plane if it’s a simple untried manure yield like grazing rye or winter vetch.

Any experienced gardener will tell you that storing is a terrific season for planting. The earth is warm, inviting plants to produce strong root systems surpassing winter. Storing weather is moreover well-appointed for gardening – neither too hot nor too unprepossessed and not too soggy underfoot.

• Once it starts to rain again, conditions will be platonic for dividing clumps of perennials, saving the most vigorous sections for replanting. Container-grown plants will settle in fast if planted now.
• If you sowed wallflowers, pansies and violas in early summer, you should start moving them into their flowering positions. Requite them plenty of water to help them get re-established. If you forgot, or the young plants perished in the drought, you’ll find that garden centres are once jam-packed with garden-ready plants to get you up to speed.
• It’s the last opportunity to sow hardy annuals such as calendulas, opium poppies larkspur, antirrhinums, cornflowers, aquilegia and nigella. The seeds will germinate and form bushy plants surpassing winter. Next year they’ll start flowering older than spring sowings, perhaps in May or June. Sow in marked rows to distinguish the seedlings you want from the weeds you don’t.
• Look out for self-sown seedlings – I’ve once spotted hollyhocks, honeywort (Cerinthe), violas, verbena and sweet williams popping up on the allotment. Protect and nurture those you want to alimony and pull out the surplus. Nature can be very generous so don’t be wrung to thin seedlings out so that there are 20-30cm between each one.
• If you live in colder regions of the U.K., prepare to lift and store tender plants such as bananas, begonias, angel’s trumpets (Brugmansia), cannas and pelargoniums. In warmer regions, you can hold off until October or plane November. The main thing is to stave any endangerment of plants stuff frosted.
• Continue picking flowers as often as possible. As someone who prefers to enjoy flowers in situ, I pick increasingly enthusiastically as the days get shorter and I spend increasingly time indoors.
• Collect flower seed as it ripens, choosing a dry day. Remove remnants of old petals, stems and seed pods surpassing storing the wipe seed in labelled envelopes or sachets.
• Dahlias, chrysanthemums and sunflowers must be tied securely to stakes or strong canes to take their flowering weight. Do not seem they will protract to do so considering they’re standing upright on their own: we are once getting our first visits from the local parakeets, and they’re snapping off every unsupported sunflower head!
• September is the weightier month to plant daffodil bulbs in the ground. Unlike tulips, daffodils need time to establish themselves in warm soil surpassing winter. You can moreover plant smaller bulbs like crocuses, irises, grape hyacinths and anemones. Practically speaking it can be challenging to find space in confines until other plants have died down, but in lawns and meadows, you should be worldly-wise to get cracking provided the soil is not too nonflexible and dry. Use a good quality seedling planter to make the job easier.

Trees, Shrubs & Lawns

Hedge trimming continues this month, and with storing rain comes the opportunity to move evergreens, re-seed threadbare lawns or sow new ones. By now, my garden has wilt very jungly, some might say unruly, with plants spilling and arching over paths and seating areas. I like it that way, but if you prefer your garden to squint tidy, there’s nothing wrong with trimming here and there to alimony things neat and usable for a few increasingly weeks. Stave stuff overzealous as birds and insects will fathom the cover.

• Follow my ‘In The Know’ guide for hedge trimming translating but don’t set well-nigh conifer hedges with your shears now as it’s too late. Yew is an exception to that rule and can still be cut for a few increasingly weeks.
• Keep camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons fastidiously well watered. This is when next year’s flower buds are formed, and a lack of water now can midpoint no flowers in spring.
• Move evergreen trees and shrubs if you wish to. They’ll need time to settle and establish new roots surpassing winter, so well-constructed this job by early October.
• Unless you’ve been watering fastidiously, you’re probably despairing at the state of your lawn. If the grass is brown, don’t worry too much, as it will untried up then without a few downpours. However, if it’s ripened bare, scuffed patches, you will need to re-seed once the ground is evenly moist. Let nature take the strain, and don’t be tempted to jump the gun if rainfall is low for a while longer.

Kitchen Garden & Allotment

September is typically a month of harvesting. Everything is so wide this year that it feels like the peak is scrutinizingly over on our allotment. Where we can, we are nurturing, feeding and revitalising plants so that they alimony cropping for a while longer. Where that’s not possible, they’re stuff replaced by brassicas for spring harvesting.

• Shorter days and potation nights midpoint that growth is starting to slow dramatically. Lower light levels reduce the rate at which fruit ripens, and unsettled weather may result in blemishes or damage. Harvest your fruit and vegetables in their prime, freezing, preserving or pickling them when you have too much. Friends and family rarely say no to a big tub of tomatoes, although courgettes can be notoriously nonflexible to requite away. Try not to let anything go to waste – what’s tiresome now will taste like manna from heaven in January.
• You can start picking storing brassicas now. Cut cauliflowers and cabbages through the stem tropical to ground level. The stumps can be left to resprout, producing edible leaves surpassing winter. Alternatively, they can be dug out and composted, making space for a new crop.
• Dig the bed over once increasingly to trammels for missed tubers when you’ve finished lifting your potatoes. Plane potatoes the size of a pea can produce a new plant next year, usually in the middle of a variegated crop. If you don’t have anything to take their place immediately, sow untried manure.
• Apples are ready for picking when they sit in the palm of your hand and come yonder with a slight twist. If you have to pull hard, they’re not quite ready yet. Store apples in a cool, dry, well-ventilated spot until you’re ready to use them.
• Sow spinach, radishes, rocket, salad leaves, oriental leaves (including pak choi, mizuna, mustard and Chinese cabbage), parsley and coriander for cropping in storing and winter.
• Keep on top of the weeding as often as you can. Shortening days signal plants to hurry up and produce seeds surpassing winter. You may find that early-sown parsley and coriander run to seed and that weeds race to well-constructed their lifecycle surpassing winter.

Wildlife & Sustainable Garden

When I think well-nigh my garden in September, the unobtrusive spider is the first creature that springs to mind. I am grateful that these prolific creatures don’t rationalization me uneasiness considering they stage a well-constructed takeover every autumn, inside and out. As I write this post, I see at least three spiders from my desk. They go well-nigh their business, I go well-nigh mine, and we’re all happy. In the garden, they create much mischief by crisscrossing every path and doorway with their invisible webs. Rarely do I make it far without transmissible the gossamer threads in my hair. If you haven’t stopped reading in horror, siphon on to discover what other delights we might find in the garden this month.

• Having made the most of summer, insects are now preparing for winter. Butterflies will flock to late summer flowers, towers up reserves for hibernation or migration when to mainland Europe. Queen bumblebees may once be looking for places to hibernate. Now’s the time to set up a bee hotel or make one by bundling hollow stems together and placing them in a sheltered spot. Hang bee hotels in a sunny position, preferably transmissible early morning rays to warm emerging sultana bees when they hatch in springtime.
• It’s changeover time in the skies, with birds such as swallows, swifts, willow warblers, woebegone caps and pied flycatchers preparing to depart our shores. Next month, ducks, geese, redwings and fieldfares will start to victorious for winter.
• Clean bird feeders and birdbaths thoroughly in readiness for the months ahead. This summer’s drought is likely to result in a scarcity of seeds, nuts and berries so be prepared to supplement birds’ natural supplies sources until spring.
• In some situations, ivy (Hedera helix) can be considered a nuisance, but wildlife adores it. In its shrubby form, ivy produces sputnik-shaped flower heads that bees and hoverflies love so much you can often hear the plant surpassing seeing it. Birds are likely to roost within, so stave any disturbance. Trim ivy, if you must, in winter surpassing birds start nesting again.
• Hoglets (young hedgehogs) need fattening up surpassing they hibernate next month. Put out dishes of water and meat-based pet supplies if they’re visiting your garden. If you spot a late-born hoglet that’s too small to hibernate, contact your local hedgehog rescue for advice.
• Frogs, toads and newts are starting to squint for shelter in compost heaps, log piles or at the marrow of ponds. Stave torturous all three habitats so that they can overwinter undisturbed.
• Hedgerows will be dripping with berries, haws and hips, providing supplies for birds, small mammals, moths and insects. Stave trimming or tidying until the leaves have fallen and all the fruits have gone.
• It’s the last endangerment to cut lawns and meadows where long grass lingers. Thoughtfully remove the zillion using shears or a strimmer and leave it where it falls for a day or two so that insects can trickle out and find volitional shelter. Then remove the hay and mow the grass to well-nigh 7.5cm.
• Don’t be unceremonious and harvest every pear, plum or world you can reach. Leave a few fruits on each tree for birds and butterflies to enjoy.
• Leave seedheads on plants such as teasel, lavender, sunflowers and Verbena bonariensis. These will provide supplies for birds and small mammals through storing and winter. Stop deadheading roses if you wish the hips to develop.
• Material for composting will mount up rapidly during autumn. Ensure you have zaftig compost bins and net sacks for collecting leaves and making leafmould. If you have space in your greenhouse, consider moving a compost bin inside to generate a small value of preliminaries heat as the contents decompose.