Collect your own seed

Now is the time for collecting ripe seed. Pick a dry day, store in paper bags or envelopes, and remember to label. 

No bare soil

If you have beds where flowers have finished and nothing to go into them for the winter, scatter a cover crop of phacelia over the bare earth to protect the soil. 

Keep on composting

Keep adding to and turning your compost heap. Aim to have some ready for top-dressing your beds before the cold weather sets in.

Plant out biennials

Plant out the biennials you sowed in July (you can source plug plants if you didn’t) into the spaces left when the early summer annuals have finished.

Make the most of volunteers

Look out for self-sown annual seedlings popping up. Carefully dig them and move them if they would do better in another position, or over-winter in pots. 

Divide Perennials

Divide your herbaceous perennials. You can be surprisingly brutal with this although the chunks should be big enough to give flowers soon (think a minimum of a 9cm pot; if you wouldn’t buy it in a garden centre then it’s probably too small).

Welcome to my flower garden at Malus Farm. I do lots of things here: grow apples and roses, eat in the long table in the orchard, cut armfuls of flowers for the house. I potter with the dogs, and I wear wellingtons all summer and tweed all winter.

But my heart’s desire and my life’s passion is growing flowers.

Like (almost) all gardening tasks, growing flowers is breath-takingly simple when you know what you are meant to be doing and when. This is why I created the ultimate guide - a printable pdf of all the jobs for the garden in September, the flowers that are out, and the seeds you can sow. Yes, even in September.  Especially in September.

At the beginning of the month, I print mine out, put it on a clipboard, and hang it up in my potting shed. To get yours, just click the button below.