Toms Top Tips for September

Gardening tips for September from Tom the Gardener

Onion Harvest

Onions sown in Spring will be ready to lift when the tops begin to turn yellow and fall over. Lift, complete with tops, brush off loose soil, and lay them out to dry in a bright, airy place sheltered from rain and damp. This seasoning process is necessary if they are to keep in storage without rotting through the winter. They are ready to store once the tops have dried.

Maincrop Potatoes

Maincrop potatoes are ready for lifting in the first half of this month. If possible, lift during a dry spell, drying them in the sun for an hour or two before storing. If you notice any signs of blight – brown patches on the leaves – in the days before harvest, remove the haulms immediately.

Marrows

Allow one or two courgettes on a selected courgette plant to grow into marrows. Raise the the fruits off the ground on a brick or tile and turn them as they grow to allow even ripening. Once the skin is hard they can be picked for storage, lasting a couple of months if stored correctly.

Green Manure

Green manures are crops sown as temporary ground cover on otherwise bare patches of land whose roots and foliage are grown specifically for incorporating into the soil. They can be used to improve the soil structure and take up nutrients that would otherwise be washed out of bare soil by the rain; some will also fix nitrogen from the air into the soil. Green manures such as winter field beans, phacelia and grazing rye can be sown now for overwintering. Next Spring, dig them into the soil at least a month before the subsequent food crop is sown, or remove them to the compost heap.

Vegetable sowing

Vegetables that can be sown this month include:

• Spring onions, for overwintering to provide crop late Spring
• Japanese onions, as sets, to grow overwinter for a crop in June/July
• Hardy salad crops such as misuma and mibuna (fast growing oriental salad leaves), winter lettuce, rocket, land cress,winter purslane. Protected by cloches or fleece, they will grow into the winter months

Fruit bushes and trees

If you intend to plant bare-root fruit trees/bushes this Autumn then get catalogues from suppliers now and start thinking about what you want to order. Although you won't be planting till November, popular stock from good suppliers disappears fast, so be first in the queue

Collect and save flower seeds

Pea, bean, squash, courgette, pumpkin and tomato seeds are easy to collect and store for sowing in subsequent years. Also, many annual flowers – for example nigella, marigold, nasturtium, eschscholzia, godetia, amaranthus – will all proffer a ready supply of free seeds.

Raspberries and other cane fruit

• Autumn raspberries: Once all the fruit has been picked off a cane, completely remove the cane.
• Summer raspberries: Tie in new canes as they grow.
• Blackberries, tayberries, wineberry, loganberry: Once the fruit has been picked from the one-year-old fruiting canes, remove them completely. Tie in new (current season) canes in their place.

Trench composting

Consider trench composting on a selected bed after it becomes free of crops (eg onions or potatoes) this month. Dig a trench one spade deep and then over the coming months fill it up with your compostable waste, mixing each deposit with some soil, and covering the mixture with the remaining soil as you go. Next year, the bed will be ideal for crops that thrive in a water retentive soil – runner beans, pumpkins, courgettes and sweet corn for example.

Food store

Hopefully you've had a successful year and now need somewhere to store your bounty (potatoes, carrots, beetroots, onions,garlic, pumpkins, marrows, apples, etc). Now's the time to scout out somewhere cool, dark, frost free, pest-proofed and dry. This could be a garage, a sturdy shed with shutters on the windows (although bear in mind that it is extremely difficult to make your average garden shed mouse proof), an under-stair cupboard of the type you'll find on the ground floor of many an Edinburgh tenement, or an unused, and unheated, room in your house. Only store food which is in excellent condition, and check on a regular basis throughout the Winter.