September Garden Guide- What to Plant NOW in Florida! - Part 1.

If you're wondering what to plant in September, this month marks a big transition in the garden. Here in Florida and other hot climates, we're moving from our tropical summer growing season into fall, which means our planting options are about to expand considerably. It's still hot at the beginning of September, but as temperatures begin cooling later in the month, we can start introducing many of the cool season crops we haven't been able to grow all summer long. So in this month's garden guide, I'm going to show you what you can plant right now, along with some of my favorite varieties for this time of year. If you're new here, hello and welcome. My name is Jarrah. I'm a lifelong gardener, permaculture designer, and owner of a seed and plant nursery here in Orlando, Florida. And just relax. You don't have to take notes. I put all of my planting ideas for September into a free printable checklist linked in the description of this video. If you're already on my email list, check your inbox because I automatically sent it out to everybody on August 30th. So let's get into this guide. The first thing I want to talk about is strawberries. Now, we're not planting strawberries in September just yet, but if you want to grow them this fall and winter, September is when you need to start getting ready. Here in Florida and other warm winter climates, we typically start planting strawberries in October as temperatures start to cool down. And the very first step is ordering your bare root plants ahead of time. So you have them when it's time to plant. So right now in September, you all need to be preparing the area where you're going to be growing and planting all your strawberries. With that said, my much anticipated strawberry bare root presale has officially started. That means you can start placing your order. We only offer them once a year because they are only planted during this time of the year. Quantities are limited and they usually sell out before the shipping season is over. So if you want to grow strawberries this fall and winter, I wouldn't wait too long to reserve yours. Then me and my team ship them out throughout October at the correct time to plant. And of course, I'll put a link down below in the description so you all can get to the details of the strawberry bare roots. As far as preparing and planning for growing strawberries, September is a great time to get your planting area ready, like I said, so you can plant your bare roots as soon as they arrive in October. Bare root strawberries arrive without soil around their roots, so you don't want them sitting around for very long before planting. If you're growing in the ground or in a raised bed, choose a spot with plenty of sun and good drainage. Clear out any old plants or weeds, loosen the soil, amend with soil acidifier if you need to, and mix in plenty of organic matter like compost. If you're growing in containers or a garden tower, like a green stock garden tower, clean your pots or pockets and fill them with well-draining potting mix, preferably one formulated for growing acid-loving plants like strawberries, because if the soil is not acidic enough, they won't produce well. The goal is to have everything ready ahead of time, so when those bare roots arrive, you can get them planted right away. I also have a YouTube video tutorial about how to plant strawberry bare roots, so of course, I'll link that below as well. Next are Asian greens. Toward the end of September, when I start noticing temperatures coming down a little bit, these are some of the very first cool season greens I start planting by just direct sowing the seeds. Most lettuce and spinach still struggle with our September heat, but many Asian greens can handle warmer temperatures, so I start with these first and save most of my traditional cool season greens for October. Since September is when we can start growing greens again, I've also chosen greens for this month's Grow Along With Me Challenge. If you want to grow along with me, all seeds in my greens collection over on my website, are 50% off through September 30th with code GREENS50. You must apply the code during the checkout process, and only one discount code can be used per order. So let me explain some of my favorite Asian greens to grow. For something with a little spice, try some Asian Mustards. J-Yolk that has beautiful reddish purple serrated leaves with a strong mustard bite. Japanese Red Giants has broader burgundy leaves and a milder flavor. While Osaka Purple is just beautiful, the leaves are green and purple with a moderate peppery bite. If you don't like spicy or peppery greens, grow Mizuna. It has feathery leaves and a much milder flavor that's great raw in salads or cooked. Mibuna is similar to Mizuna, but instead of deeply serrated leaves, it produces long narrow leaves with a mild flavor. Komatsuna or Japanese Mustard Spinach is another mild option with larger leaves and a flavor that's a combination of mustard and spinach. And then there's Tatsoi, which is one of my favorites. It grows into a beautiful low rosette shape with glossy dark green leaves, has a mild slightly sweet flavor, and you can continuously harvest the outer leaves. This is actually one of my favorite heat tolerant substitutes for spinach, so I grow a lot of it. Now let's move on to Bok Choy and Chinese Broccoli. These are another group of cool season Asian vegetables that I can start direct sowing the seeds towards the end of September as temperatures begin to cool. When it comes to Bok Choy, there are a lot of varieties to choose from. Canton Bok Choy is my favorite classic type. It has thick crunchy white stems with dark green leaves, and I found it to have a pretty good heat tolerance in my Florida garden. Sometimes I harvest the individual outer leaves so the plant can continue growing and producing a little bit more, kind of like a cut and come again style, but other times the entire head of Bok Choy is so pretty because it forms a rosette shape that I can't help it but harvest the entire thing. Shanghai is totally green in color with thick tender stems and smooth green leaves. It grows into that classic compact hourglass shaped Bok Choy you commonly see at the grocery store. If you want something really unique, try growing Purple Bok Choy. It has deep purple leaves with bright green stems, and I found that it holds up to the warmer temperatures better than regular green Bok Choy, which makes it another good variety to try early in the season. And then there's Taiwan Bok Choy, which is the one you want to grow if you want something bigger. Think of it almost like an extra large Bok Choy with thick white stems that grows taller and looser, more like a Napa cabbage instead of forming that compact little rosette shape. Then we have Chinese broccoli, also called Gai Lan or Kai Lan, and this is completely different from the traditional broccoli most of us are used to growing. Instead of waiting for one big broccoli head, you're growing it for the thick tender stalks, dark green leaves, and small flower buds. Plants are small and thin, so it's a great option to grow a broccoli-like crop if you don't have enough space for full-sized broccoli plants. September is a great time for hot climate gardeners to direct-sow traditional green beans for a fall harvest. If you're gardening in a green stock, raised bed, or containers, I recommend choosing a bush variety. Blue Lake and Harvester are both dependable producers with compact plants, while Golden Wax and Royal Burgundy add beautiful yellow and purple pods to the garden. I actually like growing all three colors together because they make a gorgeous tri-colored green bean harvest that's perfect for Thanksgiving side dishes. Another one of my favorites is Dragontongue bush beans. Their cream-colored pods are streaked with purple, making them one of the prettiest beans you can grow, and they're delicious harvested young as snap beans. If you're expecting your first cold fronts to arrive within the next three months, choose an early maturing variety like Provider bush beans. It's the earliest green bean I have trialed in my garden. It's always the first to start producing. If you have room for a trellis, I'd choose a polar vining green bean instead. While the vines take up more vertical space, they produce much more per plant than bush beans. Rattlesnake pole beans are one of my favorite all-around varieties because they're vigorous, productive, and perform well in a wide range of growing conditions. For something a little more eye-catching, purple potted pole beans produce beautiful deep purple pods that really stand out in the garden. September is also the month I start all of my European or Mediterranean type herbs from seed. Things like rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, and tarragon. My preference is to start these indoors instead of direct sowing them outside, and there's a real reason for that. A lot of these herbs have tiny seeds that take forever to germinate, and if I direct sow them outside, I have a bad habit of just forgetting that I planted them. And you have to keep an eye on them or they won't germinate or grow at all. Starting them indoors lets me control the growing conditions, keep a closer eye on germination, and grow them out to a nice transplant size before they go into the ground. These herbs actually thrive in dry warm weather, which is exactly what fall looks like here in the subtropics and tropics. So the next few months are when they're really going to take off. I need a lot of herb plants. Not only do I use them a lot in cooking, I preserve them, dry the leaves, make spice blends, etc. But I also plant them all over the garden in between my vegetable crops because their strong smell helps to repel pests and attracts beneficial insects into the garden. Some of them like oregano and thyme even double up as nice low-growing ground cover. So I like to plant those under taller vegetables to act as a living mulch and block out weeds. It's a smart way to increase the amount of edible food you grow in the same exact spot. I have a YouTube video tutorial showing how I sow seeds for a lot of herbs at once to grow out hundreds of transplants, which I'll link in the description. With the arrival of fall in September, my game plan when it comes to selecting flowers to plant in the garden completely changes because there are some significant natural events that I would like to support. The annual monarch butterfly migration is starting, and it's also the start of a rough stretch for bees. As the fall and winter wildflower bloom starts to slow down, so like the flowers and things to forge out in the wild, bees hit what beekeepers call a dearth period, which just means there isn't much food out there for them. Planting nectar-rich flowers right now means they'll actually be blooming by the time that dearth period hits instead of you trying to help them after the fact when it's already too late. If you want to support the monarchs specifically, native milkweed is the one to prioritize since it's the only plant their caterpillars can actually eat. Beyond that, I'd plant tethonia, also called Mexican sunflower. It's one of the best nectar sources you can grow, and it blooms right on through fall. Zinnias are another easy one that both bees and butterflies love, and there are some flowers that I call cool-season flowers. That's just my way of describing it. These are some flowers that I notice don't grow well in extreme heat. They do much better when things cool down, thus why I call them cool-season flowers. That includes things like hollyhock, bachelor's buttons, strawflower, forage, foxglobe, shasta daisies, and nasturtiums. Basically, the types of flowers that give a classic fairytale cottage kind of look. Go ahead and start them from seed, or start planting transplants for them now in September. Now that things have started cooling down in September, it's more comfortable to be outside, and I can start tackling some bigger garden projects. My main project right now is redoing my front yard with as many edible landscaping plants as possible. I live in an HOA community, so I look for plants with high ornamental value that blend into a traditional landscape, but also give me something useful in return, whether it be actual food or something medicinal. And you would be surprised how many plants work for this purpose. For areas where you would normally plant ornamental shrubs, there are actually a lot of edible alternatives. Calci salad tree is one of my favorites because there are several varieties with different leaf colors and patterns, so you can mix them together almost like ornamental foliage plants. But those beautiful leaves are also edible and can be harvested as a perennial green. Chaya is another great one because it grows into a large, dense shrub with attractive tropical foliage, and the leaves are edible once properly cooked. For something smaller, dwarf mojoberry mulberry and dwarf big nominal fig give you fruit on much more compact plants, making them easier to incorporate into smaller landscape beds or even decorative containers. And then there are fruiting plants that I like to prune down and maintain as shrubs or hedges. Jabuticaba, Barbados cherry, goji berry, and katuk can all be kept more compact with regular pruning while giving you an edible harvest. Jabuticaba and Barbados cherry are especially attractive because their smaller foliage and dense growth can give you that more traditional evergreen shrub look. For a lush tropical look, there are plenty of edible plants that double up as tropical ornamentals. Truly tiny bananas have big broad banana leaves, but stay much smaller than a traditional banana plant, typically under three feet tall and still produces full size bananas. So it's great where you want a tropical impact without something taking over the entire landscape. Pineapples are another one of my favorites because they look like ornamental bromeliads, but eventually give you an actual pineapple. And instead of planting ornamental flowering gingers, consider edible plants in the ginger family like the same kind of ginger used in the kitchen, turmeric, galangal, and Chinese keys. You get beautiful tropical foliage above ground, and once mature, they also produce flowers, but grow their edible rhizomes under the ground that you can harvest as needed. If you have an ugly fence, trellis, arbor, or another vertical space you want to cover, use an edible or useful vine instead of a purely ornamental one. Passion fruit is probably one of the best examples because it quickly covers the structure with green foliage, produces some of the most exotic looking flowers in the garden, and then gives you passion fruit. Thai blue butterfly pea produces beautiful electric blue flowers due to a high concentration of antioxidants that can be harvested for making teas, color-changing lemonade, and used as a natural blue food dye. Muscadine grapes can cover a large arbor or trellis while producing an enormous crop of grapes, and black pepper vines have a glossy tropical foliage while eventually producing the peppercorns we use as a spice. You can even replace some traditional ground covers with plants that you can eat. Cuban oregano, longevity spinach, and Okinawan spinach all stay relatively low, spread outward, and create masses of attractive foliage. They're especially useful along the front of landscape beds, underneath taller edible plants, or anywhere you want to fill bare soil with something productive. And finally, dragon fruit is one of my favorites if you want something that really doesn't look like a traditional edible plant. It has these long cactus-like stems and produces enormous exotic flowers before developing dragon fruit. Grow it on a decorative trellis in a large container, and it can become a really beautiful statement plant for a patio, entryway, or landscape. And that's really how I'm approaching my front yard. Instead of asking what ornamental plants I can put in a space, I'm asking what edible plants can give me the same look and serve the same landscaping purpose. And if you love this idea, but need some help actually building an edible landscape like this, that leads me into something new that I'm really excited to announce. If you love the idea of creating an edible landscape or food forest, but you just don't have the time to build it yourself, I am now offering local garden building, edible landscaping, and food forest installation types of services. We can help with everything from designing and installing an edible garden or food forest to more traditional lawn and landscape services, like mowing, sod installation, tree removal, and general property maintenance. I'm still working on getting the webpage all updated and everything with the information about these types of services, but I will link what I have so far below in the description. Just so you know, I built my own website, so it's me designing everything. But anyways, I'm getting to it. There is some information there available, and there's a form there if you have a project in mind where you can put in the details, and it will send me an email so I can contact you about it, or you simply can just email me directly at info at jarrahsgarden.com. So that covers everything I've got for you in part one. Part two goes live on September 2nd, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. Don't forget to grab your free printable September planting checklist. Utilize the code greens50 to get 50% off packets of greens-related types of seeds, and reserve your strawberry bear roots for the upcoming season. Happy gardening, everyone, and I'll see you in the next video.