To get ahead with growing vegetables ready for next spring, there’s no better time than now for some sowing. September is a great time to sow certain types of vegetables because the soil is still warm from the summer weather, while the cooler temperatures are ideal for many cool-season crops, and reliable autumn rain encourages growth.
Planting in September also allows you to stretch out your harvest season, provides crops for winter harvest, and gives you a head start on the following spring. Paulina, who goes by Allotmentality on TikTok, shared an extensive list of all the veggies, and some flowers, which she’s planting in her allotment this month. These are the crops you should consider planting.
Paulina explained that the seeds she’s sowing in September will help keep her allotment going through the winter months. This includes planting some leafy spinach.
She said: “Now that the temperatures have cooled, it’s a great time to sow spinach without the plant bolting. This is a winter hardy variety called ‘Winter Giant Spinach’, and it should be ready to harvest early next spring.”
Green thumbs still have time to plant some other winter hardy vegetables before the climate gets too cold. Consider sowing the likes of lettuce and salad greens like claytonia, also known as winter purslane or miner’s lettuce, and mizuna mustard or Wa Wa Ga Choi.
Another gardening job Paulina is preparing for is transplanting. This is the process of moving a plant from one location to another, such as from a seed tray to its final growing spot in the garden or from one area of the garden to another.
Paulina is sowing the choi seeds in modules in a seed tray to transplant later in September. If you’re sowing these, Paulina advised to cover the plant in fleece to protect them during the coldest part of winter.
To fill any gaps in your vegetable patch, sow the likes of turnips directly into the ground. At the end of September, you can sow broad beans and winter hardy peas for “overwintering”.
It’s not just vegetables that are great for sowing in September, there are also a number of flowers which can make use of the changing weather.
Paulina said: “September is also a good time to sow flowers that are useful around the veg patch. Calendula for edible petals, opium poppies for the seeds, and my favourite, Viper’s Bugloss, which the bees love and it makes a lovely cut flowers.
“All of these will flower next year.”
Gardeners World said that September is a great time to get ahead with planting crops, explaining that a great way to make use of empty soil and can also save you time planting in the spring time. It said: “Plenty of vegetables and ornamental plants can be sown or planted in the UK in September, including hardy annuals like pot marigold and love-in-a-mist, which will bloom a couple of weeks earlier than those from a spring sowing.
“In the vegetable patch, crops like garlic and broad beans can be planted now, for earlier harvests the following spring and summer.”
To help make sure your crops thrive in the colder weather, there are a few things you can do to keep them protected. Gardeners World recommended investing in some cloches and fleece to protect vulnerable crops from frost.
Here are all of the crops you should consider sowing now for next year.
Vegetables & salads
- Winter Giant Spinach
- Lettuce ‘Jack Ice’ & ‘Winter Marvel’
- Claytonia
- Mizuna
- Wa Wa Ga Choi stem mustard
- Red Giant Mustard
- Kale ‘Red Russian’
- Turnip ‘Sweet Marble F1’
- Pak Choi (early September)
- Broad Beans ‘Aquadulce’
- Peas ‘Meteor’ (early & winter hardy)
Flowers for the veg patch
- Calendula ‘Indian Prince’
- Breadseed poppies
- Viper’s Bugloss ‘Blue Bedder’
- Cornflowers
- Nigella