Everything comes together in September. Summer flowers are fading, but fall blooms and fresh, cooler air create renewed zest for home gardeners to go outside. Along with more modest temperatures, there are summer harvests, new plantings for fall and winter, and regular garden upkeep.
A visit to my favorite plant nursery.
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| Missouri Wildflower Nursery |
Earlier in August, I was-- of course-- avoiding going outside. Missouri August melts everything. In the cool of my library, I was reviewing fall flowers to plant in Missouri from the Missouri Wildflower Nursery, scouring their catalogue for native landscaping and not thinking about the heat at all. This is one of my favorite September garden tasks.
After determining my budget and picking out the appropriate plants, I called some interested friends and planned a trip to visit this charming Jefferson, MO nursery. Late summer is great for planting new perennials, and I wanted to be at the nursery the first Saturday they were open in fall to get the best plant selection, August 30th.
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| Butternut Trees are popular foraging trees, appreciated for their nuts and flowers. |
The nursery is in Jefferson City, and the hour long drive through the hilly back country is invigorating. When we arrived, the owners were not there. They were out acquiring seed for their collections-- they gather seeds exclusively from Missouri native plant populations.
It was hard not to buy everything, but I had my list and I stuck to it! The plants are actually quite affordable compared to other nurseries, another benefit to buying natives. I like to buy sets of three. This is a security in case one plant doesn't survive the transplant process, but also, plants look very nice when situated in clusters.
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| Cypress Trees have a grand presence when viewed at full size next to the waters edge. |
New plants should be planted as soon as possible, and watered frequently, especially when weather gets hot, for best success.
New Sowings
Fall gardens are a second spring for me. Missouri has a long fall period, and I like to get new plants sown in late summer to harvest vegetables throughout the later fall months and winter.
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| Green Shelf |
When daytime temperatures are above 70°F, I keep the flap open and check the water daily. Water evaporates quickly from small trays. With cooler temperatures, the flap can stay closed.
Some plants can be started to get a head start on early vegetables in spring, so long as they are protected under a frost blanket. These include broad beans, purple sprouting broccoli, collard greens, and spinach. They provide a wonderful winter cover crop to keep the soil "living" during the winter season. These plants can be grown in rotation with summer crops. Plant them out now through October.
What to plant in the fall in Missouri? Mostly I plant greens-- Viroflay spinach, Merlot lettuce, and endive varieties with the winter months in mind. The "choys" are fast growing tender greens for the fall: tatsoi, tiny bok choy, and choy sum.
Once the greens pop out, I pop them out of the trays with smaller cells into those with larger ones.
Vegetables Care and Harvests
Beans
Lima and yellow wax beans were planted at the end of May. Lima beans are a pole bean and require a longer growing season. The plant began flowering in August, but I think the birds liked them, because I noticed that a number of the flowers had been removed from the plant before they could begin seed formation. Thankfully, some beans did eventually form. Now in September, the beans are tender, but I am planning on allowing the beans to harden and dry out for winter storage.
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| Lima Beans |
The flowers are beautiful, and are worth planting for that reason alone.
Wax beans are best harvested when tender. My bush beans are about done. This year I experimented with fermenting them. I found a recipe for pizza green beans: garlic, tomatoes, oregano, and beans are placed under a salt-water brine, and allowed to ferment for 2-3 weeks.
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| Lima Beans-- flowers and pods |
I am excited about this recipe. In previous years, I have had a hard time getting fermentation to work. I read some online reviews about these fermentation lids that do a great job of removing oxygen from the containers from the get go which prevents unwanted growth. I will let you know the results once they are finished with their ferment.
Tomatoes
If you read about the June Garden, you know the tomatoes got a rough start. There was quite a bit of rain this spring, and my tomato lady had some trouble this year with her seedlings. She is an experienced grower, but the tomatoes were suffering from significant leaf curl, indicating environmental stress. I was unsure whether to keep them, but I decided to stick with them to see how they would turn out.
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| Tomato plants, without support |
I decided to also plant some nursery tomatoes on the other side of the garden just in case, along with some indeterminate tomatoes I had experimentally raised from seed.
Then in June, the tomato hornworm started devouring the tops of the vines. These were easy to control when the plants are checked each day, as the plant that is being devoured usually has a large hornworm on it which can be squashed. Be sure to wear appropriate shoes, because they are very goey. After a few weeks, they were gone.
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| Lovely Tomato Harvest |
Tomatoes are now bountiful, and our family is enjoying salsas, BLTs, and other tomato friendly recipes. I have also fermented a few jars of tomatoes with onions, garlic, basil, and vinegar.
Peppers
A few of my peppers were given as gifts, but I started others from seed in early February. Since I grow all seedlings outdoors, my peppers were grown using my hotbed-- basically a winter compost pile that moderates the outdoor temperatures to keep frost sensitive plants warm.
You can read more about my hotbed here.
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| Pepper plants are larger than ever and cropping well in a no-dig bed started three years ago. |
The pepper plants I started were placed along with my tomatoes in a newly created garden bed. They have been producing nicely this year.
The pepper plant leaves wilt in sweltering weather (85+), so I make sure to water them when I see they are suffering.
Cucumbers
These plants were sown in the ground in July. They are now cropping prolifically. The cucumbers love cooler weather, and their leaves will also wilt in the hot, dry heat. Be sure to water them when you see the leaves begin to droop.
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| Cucumbers, started in the heat of summer, are cropping nicely as fall begins. |
One fun thing to try sometime is to feel the plant stem where it enters the ground on a hot day. The stem is completely cool to the touch, clearly hard at work pumping the cool ground water through the vine to its watery fruit.
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| Huge cucumber harvest! |
Chard
I was quite impressed my the Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard variety this year. While I did get some bug damage on the outer leaves, I was able to suppress that by removing the older, outer leaves.
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| Fordhook Spinach |
The inner leaves stay intact for harvest, and can be harvested again and again in summer so long as the innermost heart is left intact.
Malabar Spinach
A new one for me, Malabar spinach is a heat loving plant that can be harvested when other plants wilt or go dormant during the Missouri subtropical summer.
Malabar Spinach
It has a lovely red-green vine, and has a mucilaginous texture-- better for cooking than salads, although they can be eaten fresh.
Sweet potatoes
Last year I had several rows of sweet potatoes, and my garden looked so lush in August, despite the heat. I was able to preserve them for winter eating. I grew several varieties, but the Covington was both delicious and the most disease resistant. The Murasaki have excellent flavor, and also have very prolific vines.
Rogue Sweet Potato Vine that grew up from last year's roots.
You could probably clip the vines to keep growth at the roots. However, the vines kept my garden well mulched. Intercropping them amongst other vegetables will be an experiment for future years.
This year, I was so involved with other plantings, I didn't get to the sweet potatoes. The roots of one plant from last year did come back, so I will have a small crop, I guess.
Okra and Corn
In that vein, I also got a late start to planting okra and corn. I planted them in early June, watched them germinate, and then went on a two week vacation. When I returned, insects had devoured most of the leaves of the okra plants, but the corn was fine.
Okra has previously been resilient to bug damage. Perhaps either the extended cool and wet weather weakened them or the late planting did. Maybe both.
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| Okra Flowers blooming, despite early damage. |
Despite initial damage, I am finally seeing pods on my okra; they are ready for harvest. Just as with my tomatoes, I will get a good harvest despite initial setbacks.
This year, I have discovered the wisdom of "wait and see". Sometimes, you might totally lose a crop, but a home gardener can often afford to experiment.
As for corn, we did get one harvest, yet many cobs were eaten by raccoons. I was warned about raccoons, but this is the first year they foraged my crop. No Till Gardener Ruth Stout suggests placing paper bags over the cobs.
Garden Maintenance
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| A patch of zinnias give a front face to the vegetable garden. |
The garden is on cruise control right now. With the dry weather and shorter days, growth has slowed. It gives time to catch up on areas that were previously ignored. Of course, even with mulch, I find certain plants need water when the weather gets dry.
Pay attention to how the plants react to determine where to water.
Edging is a part of my regular maintenance, as that border is main culprit of weed invasion. I am daily trying to reserve 5 minutes each to my native gardens, the house landscaping, and my vegetable patch.
Native Garden
With many of the early flowering plants moving towards their brown stages in September, gardeners are on the look out for an easy flower combination to give interest for late summer, when life gets busy with new school events.
Blue Sage and Guara in Bloom next to Goldenrod
One flower combination I have really enjoyed over the years are Blue Sage and Goldenrod. Additionally, Big Bluestem can be added to give structure and a border to Goldenrod's somewhat invasive growth, as well as the annual Guara to compliment Blue Sage as the gardener waits for Goldenrod to bloom.
Blue Sage and Goldenrod are taller native plants growing quietly as background foliage earlier in the year, yet the flowers' graceful beauty creates a striking combination late summer and into the fall.
They come together nicely as cut flowers as well.
These budget friendly native plants offer drought and pest resistance, as well as local hardiness for home landscaping.
That's how things are growing this September here in my garden. I hope you are enjoying yours as well!