The September Garden

A view of the side yard garden from the front

Stapelia gigantea

Senna corymbosa

Did it seem like September sped by with nary a time to take a breathe? It did for me. Harvey seemed to push us straight into September and the week+ off of work made it feel even more odd to start September. Chris was out of town for Forest’s birthday and Forest turned three and honestly, I’m not quite sure where the weeks went between that and Chris’ birthday which was just this last weekend.

Lycoris radiata

Gaillardia aestivalis var. winkleri

Brugmansia

The tug to do just a little bit less in the garden is great but the weeds are telling me not to get to cozy inside just yet. I’d like to get everything really cleaned up weed-wise and some more mulch put down in the edible and flower gardens in addition to more decomposed granite on the flower garden paths. I’m more than annoyed with whatever is digging up our flower garden mulch that I had put down back in August. Was that August? I can’t even remember now. Maybe it was September. That’s beside the point—something is rooting around and driving me insane!

Blackberry lilies

Musella lasiocarpa

For about two months or so I had noticed a hole being dug underneath our front porch adjacent to the stairs by our walkway approaching the house. I thought maybe it was the work of raccoons but my dad happened to see a opossum scurrying down the hole one night when he went to walk Daisy, my parent’s dog. Ok, probably a good clue as to what is digging around the garden, especially because it tends to only dig the bed directly in front of the house.

Monarch caterpillar

Pink banana

Love bugs, Plecia nearctica

The rest of the flower garden is slowly senescing, well, the plants that will do that this time of year. Some are in full blooming glory like the brugmansias, daturas, flowering senna, and just now coming into bloom, the pineapple salvia. I think this year I will dry some of it to use in teas. It also might be an interesting addition to kombucha.

Senna corymbosa in the side yard

Brugmansia

More of the side yard

I started a variety of seeds for the flower garden on the potting bench last week in hopes I could grow some out over winter and get them into the ground in the spring. I was hoping to get a head start on some of them because many of them I have trouble getting big enough to avoid the deer nibbling on them—the deer just nibble the entire plant down to nothing, so my plan is that maybe I can get some big enough that the deer won’t destroy in one bite. Yes, this is wishful thinking but I’m going to do it anyway.

Seminole pumpkin ripening

Future Seminole pumpkin!

Cowpea jungle

In the edible garden I sowed a lot of seeds about a week and a half ago. Most have germinated but some have not—I suspect they are waiting for cooler soil temperatures. I’ll give them a few weeks and might have to resow. So far the ones doing well are the bok choy, Florida broadleaf mustard, and kale, but plenty of others are coming up too.

Future cowpeas!

Tiny Sumter cucumber

The okra are waning and I will take them down next week. I didn’t grow a bunch this year because I still had some frozen from last year and know that next season I will plant more than the few little rows I did. The cowspeas really decided to start flowering over the last two weeks and I thought I was about to have a good harvest but the peas stopped forming and shriveled up mid-way through. No pollination? Not sure what happened there. I am getting cucumbers in now, which is a perk for my salads. I can’t wait to get carrots harvested, too, but that’s a month or so away.

Okra

A small bean harvest

It’s monarch city around here with eggs, caterpillars, and adults galore! In addition, the gulf frits are here, too. BUT, I’m super stoked about this, I finally saw something using my false nettle! I suspect it is the red admirals but I couldn’t get any caterpillar interested in escaping its leaf tent. I even tried in the evening to see if any were out and about, but nope. I was pretty ecstatic to see leaves rolled up finally!

A bok choy and squash blossom harvest.

Leeks

Bok choy seedling

Garden goals for October: Weed all the things, start planning what we want to plant in an area we’re going to move some irises out of, get some trees planted that we have sitting on the potting bench, and resow a few seeds out in the edible garden.