Making the most of your September vegetable garden

“September… where fall and summer meet.” —Will Wallace Harney

This past weekend’s cool weather made me wonder if my garden was going to last much longer. But then, the forecast this Monday morning was for upper 70-low 80-degree weather for the rest of the week so I believe I will still have an opportunity to get even more out of my garden. This makes me happy as my heirloom tomatoes—primarily indeterminate—are finally starting to ripen. I know this warm spell may not last very long so it’s time to make the most of it.

If you have green tomatoes that you want to make sure ripen, remove some leaves so your plants get more light. With the shorter and somewhat cooler days, they need less protection from the heat of the sun. Tomatoes’ sweet spot for ripening is between 70-75-degrees so let’s hope for temperatures in that range. If the weather starts to stay cooler than that for a more consistent streak, you can top your indeterminate tomatoes, so they put their efforts into ripening their existing fruit versus continuing to try and grow taller. I have noticed this year that I’m dealing with some tomatoes getting anthracnose. It’s easy to know if you have it; your tomatoes have soft spots with a dark black spot in the middle of the soft part. Best way to manage it right now is to simply harvest your tomatoes before they are overly ripe. When the season is over, make sure you remove any diseased tomato plants and rotate your crops next year. In fact, my fellow master gardener, recommends removing all plant material from your garden in the fall that in the nightshade or solanaceae family. Tomatoes, potatoes, chili and bell peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, and groundcherries are all solanaceous crops. Just don’t put them on your compost pile if you like to plan to use the broken-down plant material in your garden the next year.

It’s also time to pot up any herbs you might want to overwinter. Cut back parsley and pot it up in good potting soil so it can get acclimated to the pot. Just leave the pot in your garden until October and then bring it in and set it in a sunny window. Another plant to overwinter is rosemary. I have had limited success, but I try every year. It is recommended that you prune the roots a bit and pinch back the top to promote growth and then pot it up in a clay pot. Next year, simply bury the clay pot in your garden and dig it up in the fall—assuming it survived the winter indoors. Don’t forget about basil. It’s much easier, at least for me, to get plants started for indoors from cuttings versus trying to grow plants from seeds for the winter. You’ll find that basil roots easily in water. Once it has 1-2-inches of roots, simply pot it up in a pot and place in a sunny window for your winter cooking.

If you use lots of garlic, now is the time to plant it. Fall planted garlic will be much larger than spring planted garlic. Hard-neck garlic varieties are the best kind for planting in Wisconsin. If you planted some this last year, select some of your largest bulbs for planting for next year’s harvest. If you haven’t planted it before, there are several vendors at the Baraboo farmers market that sell garlic. I planted some really nice large bulbs last fall from one of the vendors and they produced some really large bulbs this year. I was very happy. You need to plant the garlic 6-8-weeks before the ground freezes so anytime now until mid-October is a good time to plant. That will give them time for their root system to start developing but not have the tops start to grow. Garlic needs nitrogen, so mix into the soil some bone meal, blood meal, or some other fertilizer with nitrogen before planting. These are just a few things you can do to extend your garden and even get a jumpstart on next year’s.