SEPTEMBER UK

General

• Harvest fruit, vegetables and herbs while they are in prime condition. Freeze, store or give away produce if you cannot use it all immediately.
   
• Buy and Plant out Winter Bedding Plants now for a full display of bright colourful flowers over winter.
   
• Add dwarf bulbous irises for later winter colour.
   
• Order Tulips to plant out in November.
   
• Plant spring-flowering bulbs in borders and in containers, giving priority to daffodils as they begin their root growth earlier than other bulbs.
   
• Plant prepared bulbs in bowls for indoor display at Christmas and early next year.
   
• Grow winter flowering Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) indoors.
   
• Plant bearded irises in prepared sites.
   
• Plant windowboxes and pots for winter interest.
   
• Scarify the lawn vigorously to remove dead moss and grass then spike if the soil is compacted.
   
• If the lawn is in poor condition apply an autumn fertiliser to boost root growth.
   
• Give hedges a final trim.
   
• Compost fallen leaves and those cut from plants and trees that have finished flowering and fruiting as well as cut grass and weeds.
   
• Raise the cutting height on lawnmowers as the growth rate of the grass slows.
   
• Collect ripe seeds before they fall, dry then sow or store for sowing in spring.
   
• Give conifer hedges their annual trim and reduce the growth on new spring-planted conifers to make a thicker hedge.
   
• Propagate Conifers from cuttings
   
• Check for reversion on variegated shrubs and trees and remove all green shoots.

Greenhouse

• Remove shading wash from the greenhouse if applied in the spring.
   
• Take cuttings of carnations, fuchsias, herbs and many shrubs and perennials to root in the greenhouse.
   
• Propagate pelargoniums
   
• Propagate Houseplants

Vegetables

• Continue sowing vegetables for spring - cabbages (spring and red), cauliflowers, corn sald, endive, lettuce, (cos and butterhead), onions, radishes, spinach and turnips..
   
• Plant out spring cabbages.
   
• Earth up celery and leeks.
   
• Sow green manures: winter tares, mustard, field beans and phacelia.
   
• Sow parsley and chervil for use in late winter and early spring.
   
• Divide and replant large clumps of perennial herbs.
   
• Harvest vegetables as they ripen. (It's especially important to harvest courgettes and beans while they are young and tender)
   
• Cut culinary herbs and dry or freeze to use later in the year.
   

Fruit

• Harvest your crop of tomatoes.
   
• Pick soft fruit and prune after picking.
   
• Prune espalier and cordon-grown apple and pear trees.
   
• Cut out fruited raspberry, blackberry and hybrid canes. Use their leaves to make leafmould unless they have leaf disease, in which case destroy them.
   
• Look out for caterpillars on fruit. Pick off any with leaf miner larvae or mildew on and be on the alert for slugworm damage. Set pheremone traps.
   
• Take nets off fruit trees and bushes after picking, so birds can peck off any pests.
   
• Prune raspberry canes at ground level after picking the last fruit.
   
• Harvest apples and pears and store. They can be prone to pests and diseases. Remove fallen leaves and dropped fruit to prevent disease.
   
• Examine apple and pear trees for signs of canker and prune out.
   
   
• Net grapes to prevent birds and wasps eating the fruit.
   
• Pick apples and pears as they ripen and store the excess.
   
• Apply or renew greasebands on the trunks of apple and pear trees.
   
• Remove and destroy any mummified fruit, edpecially plums.

Flowers

• Plant out spring-flowering biennials, including forget-me-nots, and wallflowers, in their flowering positions to give them time to establish before winter.
   
• Sow hardy annuals to be overwintered outdoors and in the greenhouse.
   
• Deadhead roses to encourage repeat flowering unless the roses are being grown for the colour and profusion of their hips.
   
• Cover summer bedding with several layers of horticultural fleece if frost is forecast to prolong the display a little longer.
   
• Lift tender perennials such as argyrannthemums, fuchsias and pelargoniums befor the first frost to be overwintered under cover.
   
• Deadhead regularly to encourage more flowers unless you want seeds or hips to form.
   
• Prune deciduous autumn-flowering shrubs over three years old as they finish flowering.

Ponds

• Tidy the pond by deadheading marginal aquatic plants and removing excess growth from submerged oxygenating plants.
   
• Top up garden pools to replace water lost through evaporation.
   
• Ensure the surface of ponds are kept clean by removing floating weeds and any slime algae.
   
• Clean out the pond if necessary.
   
• If present scoop out and collect mats of tiny-leaved duck weed and twirl hair-like blanket weed from the surface with a stick or garden cane.
   
• Put them in a heap on the edge of the pond overnight so any aquatic creatures can crawl back into the water. The next day add the heap to the compost heap.
   
• Put new aquatic plants in the pond either in the soil at the bottom or using special aquatic baskets.
   
• Oxygenate the pond with plants like Mash marigolds and Callitriche.