{"id":3290,"date":"2025-07-19T18:35:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T01:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/2025\/12\/10\/the-september-garden\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T05:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T13:22:48","slug":"the-september-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/?p=3290","title":{"rendered":"The September Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s September garden is\u00a0a mixture of glorious bounty, and total crop failures. A particularly wet August and September has left the garden\u00a0much more green and lush than in recent years, yielding more green beans and kale than I can keep up with, and yet that same moisture has meant cracked and diseased tomatoes. I have struggled with pests this year \u2013 cucumber beetles and squash bugs have been joined by a new culprit, blister beetles \u2013 and I\u2019ve lost all of my zucchini, winter squash, and cucumber plants (even with multiple sowings), and the blister beetles did a number on my fall beets. Luckily, they\u2019ve made a valiant comeback, and I should have a nice beet harvest to store in the root cellar.<\/p>\n

\"Beets<\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Even the same broccoli plants that first produced in June are sending out side shoots enough for our family to enjoy once a week.<\/p>\n

\"Broccoli<\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

The sweet potatoes, which you can see in the foreground below, are the real champs of this year\u2019s garden, spreading across neighboring beds. I hope the tubers below are just as bountiful, as they are one of my top five crops to store for winter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sweet<\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

The bed you see below is full of young kale volunteers. This spring I simply let a bed of kale go to seed, and I\u2019ve been rewarded with kale EVERYWHERE! It\u2019s amazing. If I had to offer two tips for gardening with less work, one would be to plant perennials like rhubarb, blackberries, walking onions, and strawberries. The other would be to\u00a0let your greens go to seed! All of the lettuce, kale, arugula, and cilantro I have currently growing are volunteers, which has saved me a ton of labor, not to mention money on seed purchases!<\/p>\n

The white hoops you see over the kale bed will eventually be covered with row cover and clear plastic, which, barring extreme prolonged cold temperatures, should enable me to harvest greens all winter long.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

These Chinese cabbage are also coming along nicely. Last year I harvested my Chinese cabbage bed\u00a0in mid-November, right before we got our first killing frost, and tossed them into the root cellar, soil still attached to their roots. I was able to enjoy raw cabbage salads through February! I guess the big take home message is that yes, sometimes gardening is a LOT of work. But sometimes there are these sweet moments of just ignoring a bed of kale, and getting a whole new year\u2019s harvest in return, or simply tossing cabbage into cool storage, that really balance out the sweating, digging, and weeding.<\/p>\n

\"Chinese<\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

What\u2019s growing in your September garden?\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Pin it for Later:<\/h3>\n

\"Take<\/p>\n

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More homesteading inspiration!<\/h3>\n
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  • \"The<\/source><\/picture>The Ultimate Guide to Growing, Harvesting, and Storing Garlic<\/li>\n
  • \"Hardneck<\/source><\/picture>Hardneck vs. Softneck Garlic: The Differences You Need to Know<\/li>\n
  • \"The<\/source><\/picture>The Ultimate Plant and Forget Garden Experiment<\/li>\n
  • \"The<\/source><\/picture>The April Garden<\/li>\n
  • \"Top<\/source><\/picture>Top Living Off the Grid and Homesteading Posts of 2014<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This year\u2019s September garden is\u00a0a mixture of glorious bounty, and total crop failures. A particularly wet August and September has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gardening"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3449,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3290\/revisions\/3449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitvsolutions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}