September is the month of harvesting a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. I’m starting with a disclaimer that in our busy household, our garden has to work hard at producing by itself due to small pockets of time spent bringing it on. This is the main reason I brought this monthly potting series to my Substack, so amateur gardeners, like me, can have a more condensed monthly round-up.
A round-up that isn’t slick, complicated and overwhelming!
Tales from an ordinary family doing ordinary things that bring the extraordinary into our days. Posts on simplifying parenthood, embracing childhood, focusing on life’s simple pleasures through home and garden content, traditional celebrations celebrated with a slightly chaotic family twist and a real sense of the love of the outdoors and nature.
Our September Garden
I’m thankful for a late sowing of beans that have given us some veg bed pickings this month, the last of our cucumbers and most of all the hedgerow's fruit and the free apples, damsons and plums from our friends that have topped up our garden’s offering after a tricky growing year.
My favourite flowers this month in our garden have got to be the hard-working fuschia that has provided us with summer pinks for 3 whole months, the consistent flowering of our trusty roses and the relentless cosmos proving that annuals keep giving when you cut them for a vase. They are all so easy and will always be a part of our late summer garden.
Again a special mention to the humble calendula for bringing us a steady supply of little blooms for our reading nook. I have had 3 stages in our utility room for weeks! Slightly past their best flowers drying for their petals, dried seed pods were brought inside to dry out properly and the final dried batch to be stored for next year’s cut flower border. A blooming marvellous bloom that keeps on giving!
Things to do this Autumn
Harvest
Runner beans
Maincrop potatoes and sweet potatoes
Courgettes, squashes and pumpkins
Florence fennel
Winter radish
Apples, pears, plums, figs and damsons
Last of the tomatoes and cucumbers
Cauliflowers
Things to Sow
Winter Salad - Sow now to keep your green supplies in the cooler months
Overwintering onions and garlic - By planting your onions in Autumn, you will feel a sense of satisfaction that your grow-your-own is underway for 2025!
Sowing broad beans and peas - Sowing straight into the soil means plants can establish over Winter and crop earlier next spring. Don’t worry though as these can also be sown in late Winter / Early Spring next year.
Winter radish - These will mature in just a few weeks. so it’s worth sowing a late batch of seeds now.
Turnips are another fast-growing crop that can be sown in bare soil in September ready for the Christmas table.
Things to Do
Turn your compost heap! Pop in the last of the grass cuttings and any dead-headed flowers that aren’t prolific self-seeders.
Continue to dead-head flowering roses
Harvest remaining onions and dry ready to store.
Pick all remaining tomatoes, including green tomatoes to ripen indoors or to use for green chutney.
Collect and store seeds - my favourite is calendula seeds at this time of year.
Re-purpose your mushroom trays from the supermarket and grow winter lettuce varieties.
Plant Winter bedding in gaps to provide colour and interest in the cooler months.
Plant Spring flowering bulbs - It may be handy to draw up a plan of which bulbs you would like to see around your garden and container pots. Consider layering your bulbs like a bulb lasagne for a steady flowering from the start of the New Year through to April /May.
Top tip Plant your container bulbs into plastic inner pots that slide into outer pots. Next year you can lift the finished bulbs out and replace them with a fresh inner pot filled with new flowers.
Foraging
I have been making the most of quieter times and boiling up cooking apples for apple sauce. Top Tip If making a crumble always make extra crumble topping that you can freeze to make a speedy weeknight pudding with a glut of fruit.
Elderberry tonic has been an absolute hit for half the house (can’t please them all!) Packed with vitamin C, boosts the immune system, rich in anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory. A natural remedy that will help keep coughs and colds away this Winter!
5-7 Ripe Elderberry heads - Just the berries (remove with a fork)
1 litre of water
Selection of spices; I used orange peel, cloves, fresh sliced ginger, fresh sliced turmeric, cinnamon sticks, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Bring to the boil and simmer on a low heat for around 40 minutes.
Mash the berries and spices halfway through to release the flavours and after 40 minutes take off the heat and allow to cool slightly. Add in 1 full measuring cup of honey or local raw honey and stir to dissolve. Pour through a sieve and into a sterilised bottle and once cooled completely store in the fridge and consume for up to 3 weeks. Top Tip Freeze in ice cube trays to last through the winter.
I’m spoiling you this month with another good find of a recipe! BBC Hedgerow Jelly
Over the last few weeks, I have foraged little and often and managed to get a very, small supply of blackberries, sloes, rosehips, damsons, cooker apples and crab apples. If like me, you have small pockets of time then just keep them in the fridge or freezer whilst gathering. It has taken me weeks to complete this recipe!
I then followed the recipe instructions (scaled down to half) and we now have 2 deep purple hedgerow jelly jars to enjoy with a cheese board this Christmas!
Thank you to Becca at WildandCurious.co for suggesting this recipe.
Thank you for coming here and seeing what we get up to each month in the outdoors. I really hope I can press publish a little earlier next month, so you can follow along with us. That said, everything mentioned in this post you still have time to do. It is ok to be guided around your own busy schedule. An hour, here and there in the garden can go a long way to establishing a thriving space that can provide your own produce and happiness for you and your family.
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