September Gardening Calendar

Vegetables

• Weeks 1-2: Sowing seeds of radish, lettuce, spinach and other greens in a cold frame will prolong fall harvests.
• Weeks 1-2: Egyptian (top-setting) onions can be divided and replanted now.
• Weeks 2-4: Keep broccoli picked regularly to encourage additional production of side shoots.
• Weeks 2-3: Tie leaves around cauliflower heads when they are about the size of a golf ball.
• Weeks 3-4: Pinch off any young tomatoes that are too small to ripen. This will channel energy into ripening the remaining full-size fruits.

Fruits

• Week 1: Pick pears before they are fully mature. Store in a cool, dark basement to ripen.
• Week 3-4: Bury or discard any spoiled fallen fruits.
• Week 4: Check all along peach tree trunks to just below soil line for gummy masses caused by borers. Probe holes with thin wire to puncture borers.

Lawns

• If soils become dry, established lawns should be watered thoroughly to a depth of 4-6 inches.
• Begin fall seeding or sodding of cool season grasses. Seedbeds should be raked, de-thatched or coreaerated, fertilized and seeded. Keep newly planted lawn areas moist, but not wet.
• Cool season lawns are best fertilized in fall. Make up to 3 applications between now and December. Do not exceed rates recommended by fertilizer manufacturer.
• Weeks 2-4: Lawns may be top-dressed with compost or milorganite now. This is best done after aerating.

Ornamentals

• Continue planting evergreens now.
• Weeks 1-3: Herbs such as parsley, rosemary, chives, thyme and marjoram can be dug from the garden and placed in pots now for growing indoors this winter. Annuals may appear leggy and worn now. These can be cut back hard and fertilized to produce a new flush of bloom.
• Weeks 1-3: Cuttings of annuals can be taken now to provide vigorous plants for overwintering.
• Weeks 3-4: Divide peonies now. Replant in a sunny site and avoid planting deeply.