If you’ve managed to keep up with the deadheading, all the tender annual plants will still be filling your garden with bright, strong colour. Long, warm days are coming to an end for another year and should therefore be relished and appreciated all the more. There is plenty to keep gardeners busy at this time of year. Read on for some useful September gardening tips.
Caring for Your Lawn After a Dry Summer
After suffering the summer droughts, our lawns are looking very sad and left with bald or thinning patches. Before repairing a drought-damaged lawn, consider your garden’s maintenance requirements and any potential water restrictions. Lawns on hills or slopes, especially if facing south, are much more susceptible to drought damage. Going forwards, it might be better to consider an alternative to a lawn by planting drought-tolerant plants such as ground cover thyme. If you do decided to repair your lawn, simply loosen the bare soil with a fork and scatter grass seed over the surface. Cover with compost, water in, and the bald patches will green up again before winter sets in. Once the grass has moistened sufficiently after a rainy spell, sprinkle autumn lawn feed or organic fertiliser all over the lawn, following the manufacturer’s instructions. This will toughen up the grass and encourage strong roots without causing soft growth that needs extra cutting.
September Garden Maintenance Tips
This is an excellent time to buy or make a compost bin for the autumn debris. You can then look forward to adding all that organic matter to the borders to maintain the garden in good heart next year. Growing plants intensively, as we tend to do, means a lot of goodness is taken out of the earth in a relatively small area. It is therefore essential to put something back in order to get the best out of the plants. Having your own compost is an ideal way of doing this.
Move trees and shrubs now while the soil is relatively warm. If a plant has got to be moved, dig around as far from the base as you can and as deep as possible to take up a large area of root. If it’s a very big shrub you may have to enlist the help of a kind friend. Wrap the roots in hessian or polythene sheeting under the root ball to retain moisture. Tie the sheet up and move the plant to its new location. Dig a hole big enough to take the root ball without having to cram the roots in. Be sure to plant to the same depth as before. Put the plant in the hole, pull the wrapping out from under the roots and gradually fill in the hole. Work the soil right in and gently firm with your boot as you go. Water in well and stake the plant if it’s in an exposed place.
Dahlias continue to flower exotically. We have two September gardening tips for maintaining the flowers as long as possible. First, take off faded flower heads to extend the season through to the first frosts. Next, cut back to the next side shoot to stimulate new flowers to grow. The best way to extend the season of flowering is to continually dead-head every fading flower from the more tender plants in the garden.
Prune climbing roses when the flowers start to fade. If they are still growing strongly, with lots of flowers, wait until next month. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between a climbing rose and a rambling rose. Usually ramblers are the roses that flower only once, normally in June, whereas climbers repeat flower almost all summer. It’s relatively straightforward to prune climbing roses. Using sharp secateurs, firstly remove any dead or diseased wood, then prune all the side shoots from all branches to two or three buds (these will form new growth next year.) If there are new shoots growing from the base, these can be tied in to form the new framework of the plant.
Finish pruning evergreen hedges or topiary, such as yew and box this month. This will give material for semi-ripe cuttings, if you want to increase your stock. Strip off all the leaves and side shoots so that only about 5cm of foliage remains and plant the stems around the edge of a container of gritty compost. Keep on a window sill and water daily until roots have formed, when you can plant them up individually. It’s always satisfying to get new plants for free and you can do this with rosemary, lavender, thyme, gooseberries, currants, flowering shrubs and even roses. Another way of getting plants for free is to save seed every year. Sweet peas, nasturtiums and cosmos are perfect for this and very easy to grow.
Gardening Tips to Help You Plan for the Season Ahead
One of my favourite September gardening tips is to take a notebook with you around the garden. Before the summer display is completely over for another year, it’s a good idea to have a wander around and assess how plants have performed and if they need to be removed completely. Sometimes you have to be tough: if a plant hasn’t come up to expectations, it has to go. There is no point wasting time and effort on a plant that, no matter how hard you try, just won’t grow well. It might be as simple as a colour clash; just make a note and move the offending plants. Have a look at our plants of the month for ideas on what you could try next!
A well-designed garden always has lots of bulbs involved and now is the time to buy them. There are hardly any areas of a garden that bulbs can’t be planted. You can plant bulbs between shrubs or herbaceous plants, in rock gardens or in the lawn. In planning a garden, bulbs are a very useful addition to a planting scheme and even if you don’t have a garden they could be put in a container.
