Now is the perfect time to sow your fall pea crop. They are sweetest when the weather cools and there’s a touch of frost in the air.
Consider planting the three types of peas: snow, shelling, and snap peas. As flowers fade in window boxes, containers fill the gaps with peas.
There are pea varieties that do well in small spaces with short vines like Little Crunch snap peas, which produce many crunchy pods. For hanging baskets and window boxes try Snack Hero Hanging Snap Peas, which are highly productive. Their 18-inch draping vines quickly fill up with crunchy pods. To get a jump start on peas, soak the seed overnight before planting.
September is here, and it’s time to think about migrating birds. They need calorie-dense food to fuel their journeys. Non-migratory birds need sustenance to survive winter in colder areas. If you’ve been feeding birds over the summer, continue to do so over the winter. Stopping would force them to search for food, which fed birds haven’t done in a long time, if at all.
The shock and disorientation would hit them at a time when wild food is scarce, putting them at significant risk of starvation. Instead, double down by packing feeders with calorie-dense foods. In addition to a good-quality seed mix, incorporate fatty foods like black-oil sunflower seeds, peanuts, and suet.
Another way to help wildlife is allowing dead trees or branches to stay, as long as they don’t pose a hazard. Birds use them as nesting sites, and all manner of beneficial insects make themselves at home. Do not leaf blow your gardens and woodsy area bare — leaves provide a winter blanket for overwintering insects and insulation for plants and small creatures.
Save money by leaving stumps, which provide shelter for insects. As stumps decompose, they will enrich the soil and your plants. Leaving just one fallen branch in your garden will benefit birds and pollinators.
Early fall is a great time to plant trees and shrubs. There will be plenty of time for their root systems to develop before a deep freeze. They will hit the ground running in spring without having to establish themselves. Of course, go native with your plantings. There are many hardy, ornamental varieties to choose from.
Fewer pests, diseases, and weeds in cooling weather make late-season plantings easier to care for than spring-planted crops. Beets take 50 to 70 days to reach maturity. Planting more now will yield another crop by Thanksgiving. Enjoy the beet greens often.
Collard greens, kale and Swiss chard all taste better after nipped by a light frost. There’s little concern about early-fall overnight chills killing your crop. Arugula, spinach, and mustard greens are among the fastest maturing cool-weather crops. If you plant them today, they could be ready to harvest in a month.
If you’re short on time, consider Mizuna, a Japanese mustard green that makes a wonderful addition to salads. You’ll be able to start harvesting the plant’s outer leaves in as little as three weeks, and the whole plant in just 35 days. Radishes grow fast, taking just three weeks to go from seed to salad.
Now is the time to rip out weak or infected perennials and roses. If you have phlox or peony covered in mildew, remove and replace them with disease resistant varieties. Roses can be the bane of a gardener’s existence. You may have older roses that you try, try, try to nurse along, yet you receive the same sad infected results.
To make your rose growing experience rosier, yank them out and replace them with everblooming, disease resistant varieties. Step away from the ubiquitous Knockout rose series. Try Betty Prior, a reliable, pink flowering shrub rose blooming till frost. Or Kirsten Poulsen, a fine red flowering everblooming shrub rose.
Now get those peas a soakin’ while clearing out hanging baskets, window boxes, barrels, containers and even the vegetable garden for peas and fall crops planting.