The September Garden

There is always something interesting about how the weather changes on September 1st!


It is almost like magic. 

The last week of August can be sweltering hot, and then... over night.. on September 1st... the weather changes and we have milder temperatures.  It happened just like that this year.  It was obvious that the garden plants were doing better in the more moderate temperatures!!  Finally, my summer squash began to do well!  

Benning's Green Tint, a patty-pan scallop-type squash, is ready to pick!

Yellow Crookneck, one of my favorite summer squash, is blooming and developing fruit like gangbusters!

Ronde de Nice, a french zucchini variety, is very tasty!

Sweet Mama, a buttercup-type winter squash is setting fruit.

By mid-September I could see that my idea for using the concrete reinforcing wire for garden fabric support was not the best idea after all.  The breezes caused the fabric to rub and snag against the wire.  Eventually, the fabric tore in multiple places and became almost ineffective.  I say "almost" ineffective, because it did offer some shade to the broccoli plants.  I realized that I was going to have to come up with another solution if I wanted protection against insects and cold weather.

The tattered row cover

At the same time, I had decided to try a fall crop of kale, chard, lettuce, carrots, beets and peas. 

The Swiss chard (Bright Lights) and kale seedlings ready to go into the garden.

I dug in about 2" of compost and then planted the seedlings.  Then I sowed lettuce, pea, carrot and beet seeds in between the rows of chard and kale. 

The seedlings looked very spindly.  I was not sure that they would survive.

I know that planting all of these things in September might be too close to the first frost date.  I had no idea if it would even make a crop, but I decided to try to extend the season with a better row cover.  I looked online and found that several gardeners in different parts of the country have used PVC pipe, bent in an arc, as the framework for low grow tunnels.  I decided to try that method.  

So I bought the 10' lengths of 1" PVC pipe from my local home improvement store. Then I dug holes, 5' apart, down the length of both sides of the garden beds.  I pushed one end of the pipe into the 1' deep hole on one side of the bed, then gently bent the pipe over to the other side of the bed, and pushed it down into the soil.   

I had to special order some frost blanket fabric, because the local garden store did not have the size that I needed.  Meanwhile, I had some of the other fabric leftover, so I just laid that on top of the seedlings and rows of seeds I had planted.