The big glut month for vegetables
The Anglo Saxons called September ‘barley month’ because it was when they harvested and made their barley brew. If you have been busy in the vegetable garden throughout the year you’ll be harvesting the benefits of your planting by gathering in the runner beans, tomatoes, sweet corn, lettuces, cabbages, courgettes and cucumbers and as if that wasn’t enough there are carrots, potatoes and turnips, courgettes and marrows and maincrop beetroot.
When you lift potatoes and onions you leave an ideal bed for moving spring cabbage sown in mid July to the plot to mature. Plant them at half spacing and come the spring you can lift alternate plants for early spring greens and leave the others to grow on and fill the space. With the glut of vegetables you’ll want to freeze the ones you can, bag potatoes in paper sacks and store onions in a cool, dry and frost free place.
- Pick runner beans
- Carry on earthing up celery
- Move lettuce seedlings to frames or under cloches
- Thin out vegetable seedling, lettuce, endive, spinach beet, winter spinach
- Lift maincrop potatoes
- Store carrots and parsnips in hessian or thick paper sacks
- Freeze Brussels sprouts, broccoli, sweet corn and cauliflower cut into sections
- Plant rooted strawberry runners where they are to fruit
- Pick and store apples and pears
- Leave marrows and pumpkins in a sunny place to harden