As I write, today is the last day of summer and tomorrow the first of autumn – at 3.49pm British Summer Time on Saturday 22nd September to be precise, when the sun will be directly above the equator and we all, wherever we are on the globe, experience approximately equal amounts of day and night in 24 hours.
For gardeners this means a multitude of things – with longer nights and shorter days the range of vegetable crops we can grow successfully before winter sets in is increasingly small. If like me you’ve harvested lots of summer crops and are looking at patches of bare soil (slowly colonized by weeds in my case!) don’t despair: there are quite a few thing you can start off now. For instance you can sow:
- Winter Lisbon spring onions
- Cherry Belle radishes
- Oriental salad leaves (cover with fleece when frosts are forecast though)
- Perpetual spinach
- Lambs lettuce
- Standard lettuces (try Winter Gem) in the milder south at least
- Broad beans for an early spring crop
Also garlic and certain varieties of onion sets can be planted now and will be ready that bit earlier than those planted next spring. Lots of spring and summer sown vegetables can last outdoors for quite a bit especially the root veg – and sprouting broccoli will happily overwinter to provide bonus shoots next spring, which is very exciting!
If you don’t have late flowering plants already growing in your garden this year, and are missing the splash of vivid colour you get from petals rather than leaves or bark, you can always plug a gap with winter flowering cyclamen or carefully chosen violas or pansies, which the garden centres are all keen to sell us at this time of year – just mind you don’t turn your garden into a Winter Gardens style park! Not by accident anyway. By design? That’s different.
