Mid-September Garden

The September garden is cooler and calmer. The summer harvest is dwindling, and we have some rainy days to refresh the green. My fall planting is going well, and I can relax with the watering. This is the time to begin a little garden clean up, and preparing for winter.

Agenda: 

1. September garden tasks

2. Garden clean up and winterizing

3. September planting

4. Save seeds

5. Freeze tomatoes

1. September garden tasks:

The consistency of the 15-minute daily visit keeps me connected to my garden even when I don't accomplish much. In September it's all about looking for veggies to harvest,and then a little garden clean up. I'm using the Second Breakfast Garden monthly guides this year to update my checklists, because they are in zone 8b.

1. Tomatoes: The cool nights are taking their toll. Two of my vines are pretty dead - these I will cut and leave as mulch. Pretty soon I'll need to call it done for the final plants, cut them at soil level and bring the whole vine indoors to ripen. Green tomatoes won't ripen so I can try frying them. (See how to freeze below.)
2. Prune raspberries: Finish up my first pass pruning, taking out any really dead wood, to give everything more room to breathe. But I'll leave about a foot of cane, for small pollinators to nest in.
3. Seed Collecting and Saving: Beans, sunflowers and nasturtium, peppers, and spinach.
4. Prepare space for the winter garden: For leeks, kale, bok choy, and garlic.
5. Sow Cover Crops: Chop plants to the soil line then broadcast fava bean (and winter rye or oat) seed to enrich and protect soil through the winter.

2. Garden clean up and winterizing: 

Take it easy! Only remove as much as I need to for fall planting and for disease removal. Do not leave any garden soil bare all winter. - the rain will compact the soil and leach out important nutrients and minerals. Here's the best plan:

Leave some plants standing to go to seed for birds and insect habitat.

Some things that have to go in the yard bin: 

• Squashes with powdery mildew.
• Diseased and rotten tree fruits and cane fruits. These attract unwanted pests and help perpetuate their life cycle. 
• Fruit tree leaves. Many fruit tree pests and diseases overwinter in leaves. 
• Weeds with seed heads. One year of seeding means seven years of weeding as the mantra goes. 

Any beds that are empty or need prep for spring:

• Cut plants, but leave the roots in the ground to rot, which feeds microbes helps create good soil structure.
• Chop plant tops up with my pruners, then leave them as mulch for insects and microbes to do the work of decomposition and return the nutrients to the soiled protect from rain leaching.
• Add a light dusting of lime on garden beds and fruit trees (but not on natives) to break down during the winter, counteract the rain depletion, and assure a neutral pH for spring planting.
• Spread on a layer of leaf mulch. Worms will dine on them all winter leaving nutrient rich castings. 
• Cover leaves with a thin layer of compost to keep the leaves from blowing away and restores P and K levels as well as other nutrients and minerals.
• Sprinkle cover crop seeds.

3. September planting:

The second half of September is ideal for transplanting cool-tolerant fall crops. Make sure to work in a nitrogen rich fertilizer as fall soil is generally depleted of this important nutrient. When planting anything for the fall, make sure you plant early enough to mature before the first frost date (FFD), which for us is on October 20th. I've made myself a weekly planting schedule, and this is Week 5: Leeks, kale, and bok choy!

Kale is a cool-season leafy vegetable of the Brassica (mustard) family along with cabbage and broccoli. It’s a native to Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, and the Greeks were growing several varieties by the 4th century BC.

Plant kale either early spring or late summer, as this plant grows best before and after the heat of summer. The best kale is usually produced in the fall, because kale quality is enhanced with a light frost, and will continue to grow even after a light freeze. And you can keep harvesting even after a hard freeze. Some people say you can put kale in the ground as late as 3-weeks before the first frost.

I started kale seeds indoors on August 3 and they are now small seedlings, ready to plant, 18-inches away from other plants, set in all around the garden so as to confuse the aphids. Kale likes moist soil as much as it likes cool weather, so water well and regularly. This is the best way to ensure sweet, crisp leaves. And they will produce new leaves all winter!

Bok choy (Brassica rapa), is also a member of the mustard family, and is native to China, specifically the Yangtze River Delta area, where it was likely bred from native wild brassica species growing in the area around 3,500 years ago. It's a cool-weather crop that you can plant in the early spring and again in the fall. Bok choy is vulnerable lots of pests: aphids, cabbage worms and root maggots, flea beetles, slugs and whiteflies. Planting near onions can help deter cabbage maggots, and rosemary, sage, thyme, coriander or nasturtiums will help keep flea beetles and aphids away. Definitely do not plant them near other Brassicas because they are all susceptible to the same harmful insects. In fact, if you scatter your bok choy here and there in the garden, it will be less likely to attract insects and worms. 

I have a bunch of very tiny seedlings that are hardened off and ready to plant. I'll put some where I plan to put the garlic later.

4. Save seeds:

I’m also going to gather seeds. Today I've collected handfuls of beans still in the pod to dry, as well as nasturtium seeds, and any sunflowers that the jays haven't eaten already.

They need to dry for at least a week. Once they are dry I will put them into labeled envelopes, and store all my seeds in a zip-lock bag in the refrigerator, near the bottom, away from the freezer. (Note to self: Next spring, take bags out but keep them closed until the seeds warm, so moisture in the air doesn’t condense on the seeds.)

4. Freeze tomatoes:

I recently found this article at the Reid Homestead site on a supper simple way to freeze tomatoes.

1. Fill a tub with cold water, and add a few large glugs of vinegar.
2. Wipe off any big dirty areas on the tomatoes, and then drop them in the tub.
3. Let them sit for a few minutes, and swish them around a time or two. (The vinegar helps kill off any bacteria or mold that may be sitting on the tomatoes, so this is an important step.)
4. Set the tomatoes on a towel to dry.
5. Core each tomato, and cut an X on the bottom end.
6. Place in a zip lock freezer bag and put in the freezer!

Freezing tomatoes means you don't have to blanch and peel them later! You just pull out a frozen tomato, run it under warm water, and the skin comes right off! So easy!