September – In your garden

September is here and there is plenty to be done in the garden while you’re outside enjoying the last of the year’s warmth. Harvesting crops will keep you busy this month and there’s plenty of work to do tidying and maintaining plants and equipment.

Timely tips!

• Divide your herbaceous perennials this will help keep them healthy and vigorous year after year and will help multiply your stock.
• Net ponds now before the autumn leaf fall gets underway to help reduce the amount of debris getting in your ponds.
• Clean out your cold frames and greenhouse ahead of autumn sowing and growing.
• Plant spring flowering bulbs now such as daffodils and hyacinths for glorious colour next year!

In the flower garden

• Keep dead heading and feeding your hanging baskets and containers to help keep them going to the  frost.
• Dead head your roses and penstemons to prolong flowering.
• Prune any late-summer flowering shrubs such as helianthemums (rock roses)
• Prune climbing roses and rambling roses once they’ve finished flowering (unless they are repeat flowering varieties in which case leave them until later in the year.)
• Still keep your camellias and rhododendrons well-watered at this time of year to ensure that neat years buds develop well.

Vegetable garden

• Keep harvesting crops if you have a glut of fruit and veg, try freezing, drying or pickling so you can enjoy them later.
• Harvest your sweetcorn, to test if its ripe pinch a kernel if it release a milky sap its ripe, if the kernels are starchy you have left it to late, if they’re watery there not ready so leave them a little longer to ripen.
• Pull or cut off the foliage of main crop potatoes at ground level 3 weeks before lifting them. This will prevent blight spores infecting your potatoes as you lift them and will also help firm the skins of your potatoes.
• When you dig up your potatoes spread them out to dry for a few hours before you store them because if you store them while wet you could get rot set in and ruin all your hard work. Use hessian or paper bags to store them in as this will help them to breath. Only store healthy potatoes.
• If you growing pumpkins help them ripen by removing the leaves shadowing the fruits also raise them off the ground to prevent them rotting, use a piece of slate or wood.
• Keep feeding and watering French and runner beans to make the most of them. keep harvesting little and often to prevent them setting seed.
• When bean and pea plants have finish cropping cut them of at ground level leaving the roots in the ground these will slowly release nitrogen back in to the ground as they break down.