Your September Garden

Here in Bedfordshire the Summer holidays are over, or if you’re waiting until the schools are back to take yours, it’s holiday time! but it’ s also time to think about late summer planting for our gardens. We can keep the colour going for some time by regular deadheading and feeding and the late perennials will keep the garden going for another few months yet.

Fashionably Late Perennial

A new lease of life in the late summer comes with an array of plants that traditionally flower
later in the year. As the usual summer suspects begin to fade away, fill your borders and pots
with late flowering perennials. Japanese Anemones with their tall stems and vibrant shades from pink to white; are particularly good in a sunny spot. Asters /Michaelmas Daisies, another hardy late flowering perennial, (some have been re-names Symphyotrichum), are also good ones to cut and bring inside to enjoy. Verbena is also a delightful late bloomer, the deep purple hues of the flowers will bring a real warmth to your borders and pots. Echinacea and Rudbeckia as well as bringing wonderful flower colour develop beautiful seed heads that can last right into the autumn. Other plant varieties that are fashionably late include Alstroemeria, Monarda (Bergamot), Hardy Geranium – usually on their second flowering, Chrysanthemums, Dahlias and billowing Ornamental Grasses which bring fabulous texture to your displays.

Jobs for the garden

Divide herbaceous perennials. Lift clumps and then divide into pieces, either by prising apart with two forks or cutting up with a spade or bread knife. Each piece needs some leaves and roots.
Plant spring-flowering bulbs such as snowdrops and daffodils but leave planting tulip bulbs until
November
Harvest crops of onions when the leaves begin to flop over. Pumpkins and squash should be raised off the ground to ripen in the sun before harvesting. Harvest sweetcorn when the juice turns creamy and the tassels brown
Pick autumn raspberries as soon as they are ripe. Cut fruited blackberry stems down to 18in
Pick pears as soon as the first one falls; they go gritty left to ripen on the tree. Early varieties of apples, such as ‘Discovery’ are best picked and eaten as soon as they’re ripe.
Dig up remaining potatoes. Store in a hessian sack with some slug pellets
Carry out autumn lawn maintenance, including aerating, scarifying, top dressing and feeding. Reseed
bare patches, and create new lawn from seed.
Collect and sow seed from perennials and hardy annuals
Attack overgrown ponds. Plants should cover a maximum of 50% of the surface, so clear-out if yours is more. Divide and replant waterlilies at the same time, and remove leaves as they turn yellow.
Clean out cold frames and greenhouses so that they are ready for use in the autumn