September in the Garden- Permaculture Food Gardening in Australia
by Ewa Bekiesch, Permaculture designer, educator, sustainable living consultant, and healthy food advocate.
Spring is here! A super exciting and busy time in the garden. All self-seeding edibles are emerging everywhere! Fruit trees are flowering. We can finally plant out all the precious little seedlings we looked after during the cold winter months, and we can sow and plant summer veggies. Yay! The morning and evening temperatures are still low but the frosty time is over!
This article might give you some ideas about what can be done, sown, planted, and harvested in the garden in Australia during the month of September. Feel free to comment below if you would like to add or ask something.
General gardening jobs
- Applying compost tea every 3-4 weeks to plants with new growth and the garden beds around the veggies. Check my video here if you want to know how to make your own. You can use any greens for it! I know this is something I write about each month but this is really important! Applying compost tea to your garden should be a regular task if you do serious gardening.
- Cleaning dry Banana leaves and turning them into mulch or compost. See my video here on how easy and quick can this be done.
- Sowing, planting, harvesting – check the list below. This is the perfect time to plant new fruit trees!
- Preparing for summer! Weeding if required and mulching, mulching, mulching! Don’t forget to water the ground before adding new mulch. Mulch will keep the soil cool and moist and this is exactly what we want. The earthworms are most happy and active when the soil temperature does not go over 24°C
- Prepare for the emerging summer bugs! Organise fruit fly bags and nettings for fruit and veggies, and plant heat-resistant herbs like Bush basil, Rosmarine, mint, shallots, and other herbs near your fruit trees and garden beds to confuse the creatures you don’t want in your crop.
What NOT to do this month
- Planting any brassicas and radishes is over now until autumn. They don’t like the warmer weather we are coming into, will bold and all sorts of bugs will have a feast on them, too, so forget it!
Sowing, planting, harvesting
Notes:
- There are more plants you can grow but I am limiting my list to the plants which I grow in my food forest and I have the best experience.
- If you are looking to buy some heirloom, non-GMO, and open-pollinated healthy seeds or plants, consider visiting my online shop at www.foodforestseeds.au Thank you for supporting my small business 🙂
- I have included links to the individual seeds and plants I sell. Simply click on the name with the link and a new page will open where you can read more info about the plant, and you can buy it if you don’t have it yet (all coloured names include the links, more to come!). Enjoy!
Sowing
Many of the plants are self-seeding in our food forest and emerging out of nowhere. If you don’t know some of the plants in the list below, check my ‘Food Forest Guide’ for more info about the plants, how to grow and use them, along with some other tips and tricks.
I am super excited about all sorts of annuals we can start to grow this month! Check it out!
- Amaranth
- Basil
- beetroot
- beans
- carrot
- chives
- parsnip
- parsley
- edible flowers
- potatoe
- Asparagus
- Artichokes
- Capsicum
- Cape Gooseberry
- Chilli
- Cucumber
- Rockmelon
- Pumpkin
- Rosella
- Squash
- Tromboncino
- Bottle Gourd
- Zucchini
- Luffa
- Eggplant
- Okra
- Tomatoes
Planting
No trees in this list, mainly because there are too many fruit trees you can grow in a subtropical climate so simply choose what you enjoy eating and what suits your garden. If you want to know what trees we are growing, check our ‘Food Forest Guide‘.
Planting:
- tomatoes
- beetroot
- Carrot
- celery
- Celeriac
- Cassava – Manihot esculenta (start in pots if you getting minus temperatures)
- bush basil – Ocimum oxcitriodorum
- Galangal – Thai Ginger –Greater Galangal, Alpinia galangal
- Gotu Kola – Centella asiatica
- Lemongrass – Cymbopogan citratus
- Longevity Spinach – Gynura procumbens
- Okinawa Spinach – Hawaiian lettuce – Gynura bicolour
- Peruvian Parsnip – Arracacia xanthorrhiza
- St John’s Wort – Hypericum perforatum
- Goldenrod – Solidago canadensis
- Tarragon, Estragon – Artemisia dracunculus
- Pigface, Baby Sunrose – Aptenia cordifolia
- Brahmi-Memory Plant – Waterhyssop – Bacopa monnieri
- Bana Grass – Pennisetum purpureum x amaricanum
- Sugarcane Red – Saccharum officinarum
- horseradish
- oregano
- QLD Arrowroot
- shallots
- garlic chives
- sweet potatoes
- mint
- Rosella
- Zucchini
- Cucumber
- Pumpkin
- Squash
- Bottle Gourd
- Tromboncino
- honey melon
- watermelon
- Okra
- Pepino
Harvesting
We are harvesting daily and as required, depending on what we like to eat and cook, and/or what needs to be harvested. The August harvest list includes and is based on what grows in our food forest and what is possible, fruit included. As you may think, we don’t harvest all of it every day. Many of them simply keep growing and wait patiently for their turn to end up in the kitchen, as green mulch ‘chop and drop’, some of them go to compost if they are taking over, or as food for our chickens, ducks, or worm farm. The possibilities are endless.
Perennials crop we harvest in September:
- Bush basil – Ocimum oxcitriodorum
- Cassava – Manihot esculenta – roots
- Cranberry Hibiscus – Hibiscus acetosella – leaves and flowers
- Galangal – Thai Ginger –Greater Galangal, Alpinia galangal – roots
- Gotu Kola – Centella asiatica – leaves
- Lemongrass – Cymbopogan citratus – leaves and stalks
- Longevity Spinach – Gynura procumbens – leaves and stalks
- Okinawa Spinach – Hawaiian lettuce – Gynura bicolour – leaves and stalks
- Peruvian Parsnip – Arracacia xanthorrhiza – leaves and roots
- Brahmi-Memory Plant – Waterhyssop – Bacopa monnieri – leaves
- Bana Grass – Pennisetum purpureum x amaricanum – leaves for mulch and food for animals
- West Indian Arrowroot – Maranta arundinacea – root
- Sugarcane Red – Saccharum officinarum – cane, mostly to dry and store for meat smoking later on
- Elderberry – Sambucus Nigra – flowers
- Strawberries
- Alpine strawberries – Wild Strawberries – berries
- Aloe Vera
- shallots
- garlic chives
- sweet potatoes – leaves and roots
- bananas
- pawpaw – leaves and fruit
- Horseradish – leaves and roots
- limes
- kumquat
- Dandelion – leaves and flowers
- Cotton balls
- Mulberries
Short-living perennials and annuals we harvest in September:
- White and Red Cabbage
- Wombok
- Ethiopian cabbage
- broccoli
- cauliflower
- Pigeon peas
- tomatoes
- all sorts of herbs
- Nasturtium
- QLD Arrowrot – leaves for chickens and bulbs for us
- mustard greens
- bok choi, pack choi
- kale
- radishes – leaves and roots
- Lettuce
- Chinese tree lettuce leaves
The next article comes out in the first week of October.
What are you sowing, planting, and harvesting in your garden at the moment? Leave your comment under the article below on my website. I would love to hear from you.
If you would like to support our work, you can do so in many ways:
*Subscribe to our YouTube channel
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*Buy a plant, cuttings, seeds, or Ewa’s Food Forest Guide at https://www.foodforestseeds.au
*Book one of our workshops
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Enjoy your garden!
Ewa
