September is the month for reaping the rewards of your labours – lots of crops, such as runner beans, potatoes and raspberries are ready to harvest. But you can also sow seeds for future harvests.
The weather in September is often warm, so you’ll need to keep watering.
It’s a time when you might have gluts of certain crops – find out about preserving your harvests.
Here are some jobs you can get on with on the allotment in September.
Harvest crops
Oodles of crops are ready to harvest in September, including onions, potatoes, runner beans, courgettes, autumn-fruiting raspberries, tomatoes, apples and the last of the runner beans.
Sow veg
Now is time to start sowing the vegetables that will provide valuable winter harvests and earlier spring and summer pickings. You can sow leafy veg such as spring cabbages and spinach, winter salads, broad beans and peas for earlier harvests next spring, onions, shallots and garlic, and quick-growing crops such as turnips and radish.
Sow a green manure
Now is a good time to sow a green manure, such as grazing rye, over any earth that is going be left bare over winter – it will suppress weeds and will add nutrients when dug into the soil in spring. Find out how to improve the soil with green manure.
Watch out for wasps
Wasps can be a real pain at this time of year, feasting on the juices of split fruits. To minimise damage, pick fruits as soon as they are ripe, and pick up any fallen ones. Try to keep birds of crops such as apples and pears, which can be pecked at by birds, attracting wasps afterwards.
