It's a Task List for the Month of September. For You!
September is traditionally the hottest month of our Bay Area year, so please watch and water appropriately. Also, if you’ve come back from your summer vacation and all your non-drought-tolerant plants have failed to thrive without water when you were gone, maybe now would be a good time to think about getting more of your favorite drought-tolerant plants. From us! At the Cactus Jungle!
September Gardening Tasks include:
- Water your Lithops. This is the time of year! Take a risk! Pour water right over their little stone-like heads. Remember, the rest of the year we mist them.
- Fall Veggies: Plant kale, spinach, cabbage, peas, arugula and lettuces of all colors.
- Christmas Cactus: Move them into a shady spot and start with a bloom food to get your Christmas blooms on time.
- Orchids: If you got blooming orchids in spring, now is a good time to start the bloom food to get a 2nd round of flowers this fall.
- Last chance for cuttings and divisions for summer growing succulents like Echeverias and Crassulas.
- September is the last month of the year that it is safe to transplant cactus, or to plant them in the ground. After this month we are close enough to winter and they won’t like it.
- Fruit Trees and berries, including blueberries and strawberries both: Now is the time to fertilize with a broad spectrum fertilizer. Citrus need a citrus food. Blueberries need a food for acid-loving plants. Strawberries want a standard fruit and flower food.
- If you don’t pull your weeds before fall, please make sure you dead-head the seed-heads before they spread their seed into weed season. Less seed now means less weeds later.
