Happy Friday!

It’s the last weekend of September, and there’s still plenty to plant. If you’ve been standing in front of an empty garden bed wondering what to do with it, let’s give it a job.

You don’t need to tackle the entire garden this weekend. A few well-chosen projects are enough to keep things moving.

Your weekend garden game plan

Plant something you’ll look forward to eating.

Carrots, radishes, lettuce, kale and beets can all be sown directly into the garden now. Pick a few vegetables you actually enjoy eating. There’s no requirement to grow kale just because someone on the internet told you to.

Before you open the seed packets, make your plant labels. It’s much easier to keep track of what went where when you aren’t trying to remember after everything is planted.

Give your recent plantings some attention.

Check the soil around new transplants and anywhere you’ve sown seeds. Seedbeds need to stay evenly moist until germination, which may mean watering by hand twice a day during hot weather.

This is the part that’s easy to overlook. We put so much effort into choosing plants and getting them into the ground, but the care afterward deserves just as much attention.

Deadhead flowers to keep them blooming.

Take a few minutes to snip faded blooms from flowers such as zinnias, salvia, gomphrena, or amaranthus. Removing spent flowers before they set seed encourages more blooms. Follow the stem down to a healthy set of leaves and make your cut just above it.

Make room for spring flowers.

We’re entering the fall sowing window for cold-hardy annuals such as larkspur, nigella, poppies and sweet peas. These are planted in fall for blooms next spring.

If you’ve admired those flowers in someone else’s garden, this is your reminder to plan for your own. Waiting until you see them blooming means missing the fall planting window.

​See the full September planting list​

And if your garden is still a work in progress, welcome to the club. Choose one thing you can get done this weekend and start there.

Happy gardening,

Callie