hello friends welcome to the California garden in the month of September this is
the month when summer is all but over and the cool weather sets in
we have divided our video into four sections in the first section we will
take a tour of the garden in the second section we will look at what's growing
in the garden in the third section we will look at all the harvests that we
made and finally we will look at the things to do in your garden this month
so let's start with the garden tour and the first bed we have the Emerald
okra growing that has produced a lot of okra
and right next to it where we had the okra plants growing
we harvested them and then we planted some onions
the tomato jungle is now actually looking like a jungle but the tomato
production has resumed in very high temperatures you might expect a
reduction in the amount of tomatoes you get but once the heat of the summer
season is down you don't get more Tomatoes this is the pumpkins bed and
then moving on to the amaranth bird where we had a lot of amaranth growing
you might have seen my episode on growing Amaranth where we have harvested a
lot of amaranth from this bed and moving on to the peppers and eggplant bed
it's the end of summer and the peppers and eggplants are still growing
they are producing very strong as you can see here the poblano peppers they're
looking great and this is a poblano pepper and then we also have eggplants
as you can see around here this is the purple eggplant and this plant has
produced a lot of eggplants so i made a separate video on this and if you want
link to the seeds let me know i will send you the link to some of these
purple eggplant seeds so that you can grow them in your garden
now let's look at what's growing in the garden we have white cucumbers that grew
very well in September these are a prolific cucumber variety that i
highly recommend and in the pumpkins bed or the melons bed we have the winter
melon that's growing it's also called the ash gourd and it's a great value to
grow in your garden
we also have the red pumpkins now my pumpkins didn't go very well this year
but I still got decent pumpkins from this bed now this is the Malabar spinach
this is a great spinach variety that will give you a lot of spinach during
the heat of the summer season it can be grown in spring, summeras well as
fall and is a summer crop this is the bitter gourd plant out of all the gourds
that are growing the bitter gourd did give us a lot of harvest compared to the
other gourds, so it's a great gourd to grow during the summers now let's look
at all the harvests that we made during the month
amarant this was a prolific grower this month we harvested a lot of amaranth the
whole month and the plants are still growing strong
white cucumbers were very prolific as well
they are growing this in a container and we got a lot of white cucumbers
and now towards the end of the summer season we are still getting a few
of them so the white cucumbers are not only very delicious i hope you try
growing them in your garden
I'm sure that you're going to like the taste of the cucumber as well and it's
also easy to grow them in containers here you can see the harvest
great-looking cucumbers that are delicious and easy to grow
and the eggplants the purple eggplants we harvested right through September a
lot of eggplants being harvested as you can see here and all our eggplants whether
we were growing them in containers or in raised beds produced a lot of
eggplants that we harvested right through the summer season and thru September
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and now moving on to the gourds the bottle gourd was one gourd that we
planted in containers as opposed to raised beds as we usually do and in this
whiskey barrel container it actually did very well you can see our first harvest
that looks pretty good and then subsequently we were able to harvest a
few more from this plant and if you haven't tried growing bottle gourd i
highly recommend that you try it out
it's a very delicious gourd that you can prepare in a lot of different ways and
it's also very healthy it does contain a lot of vitamins and minerals
so it's healthy and it's nice for you
Bitter gourds we were able to harvest a lot of bitter gourds
from this bitter gourd plant this is also growing in a container
and bitter gourd once again is something that you might have to try out before
you grow in your garden but if you do like the taste I can tell you one thing
for sure this is loaded with vitamins minerals
antioxidants and is extremely good for your health
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now moving onto ridge gourd which was the other good variety that we planted
this is growing in the raised bed which was right next to our wall and it
provided some good support now ridge gourd is another excellent good variety to
grow and you have to try it out before you grow it once you start growing
gourds like a ridge gourd I'm sure that you'll be pleasantly surprised
now Malabar spinach was one spinach variety that grew very well through
summer as well as in the month of September we were able to harvest a lot
of spinach from this plant and we were growing this in a container a whiskey
barrel container about four plants as you can see here they've vined out quite
a lot so one way to harvest Malabar spinach is to just trim the vines that
way you plant will be pruned and you will get a harvest of your Malabar
spinach as well the other option is to just harvest the leaves as you can see
here and as you keep harvesting the plant will keep growing and eventually
it will form flowers as you can see here that will form seed so you can grow a
fresh crop next year
okra we harvested a lot of okra from not only our container which was the
giant okra it was still growing strong in September but we also harvested a lot of
the Emerald okra from the raised bed now the Emerald okra is one of the most
prolific okra that I have grown and I highly recommend that you grow this okra
variety if you have grown it do let me know in the comments below or if you
have a specific variety that you like our viewers to try do let us know
and this okra variety the Emerald okra is also very delicious it's quite
resistant to pests except for aphids I did have some aphids on the plant and
it was easy to clean them with soapy water and just spray them down now this
is the harvest as you can see here the okras look excellent and they not only
look excellent have excellent flavor as well
the peppers we harvested this month
include the poblano pepper that you see here the Santa Fe grande pepper which
is an excellent pepper variety its hot as well and the hotter and very
delicious Thai chili peppers we were able to get a lot of these Thai chili
peppers and they were not only hot they were excellent in taste as well now the
pumpkins that you see here these are the red pumpkins we did not get a huge
pumpkin harvest this season but just a few but the quality was excellent
these are the small pumpkins
the baby pumpkins that you can grow in your garden
we also harvested the winter melon as you can see here it's also called the
ash gourd by some people but its the winter melon it's white from inside
and it's absolutely delicious
so when you winter melon reaches this size you can harvest it as you can see here
it's a great-looking melon and I'm sure that you'll enjoy the taste now moving
onto our fruits we have Arabian guavas that are growing and are producing
guavas this month so starting September we did get a lot of Arabian guavas as you
can see here they have ripened and they look yellow compared to the slightly
green ones the ones that are extremely yellow are the ripe and sweet guavas
and this is one of my favorite guava varieties and moving onto pomegranates
pomegranates have started ripening this year on this month
and as you can see here we've started harvesting them and we do have a lot of
pomegranates growing we are able to harvest at least one or two a day and it
still keeps producing so this is the wonderful pomegranate and it's of
excellent quality now let's look at the things to do in your garden for this
month the first step is to prepare your beds
and the way you prepare your beds is rake them nicely make sure all the weeds
are gone and add a lot of organic matter to your bed so that you're ready to plant
and it's a good time to start your fall vegetables we are sowing this utah jumbo
yellow onions in this bed
it's a great onion variety to grow in Southern California and it's also the
perfect time
so once your beds are ready you need to start sowing your seeds and before you
sow your seeds you need to make some rows so i'm just using this tool to make
some rows in the bed and then sow the seeds in a straight line now don't worry
about thinning the seeds you can thin the seeds later on once the plant emerge
and just cover the seeds well and then one the seeds are covered you just need to water
them and keep them moist till they germinate and we're also going to be
starting our cool season crops like beets and if you're growing in
containers and make sure you use a good organic potting mix i saw this one at
our local garden center and i'm trying to use it and i'll let you know how it
goes but it looks like it's a great quality potting mix its organic and
we're going to be growing our winter radishes in this container so it's a
good time to start the winter crops
so there we have it folks that was our
episode on the California garden in the month of September if you like this
monthly gardening series do give us a thumbs up for this video and do let
me know in the comments below what you are planning to do in your garden this
month I'll see you again soon happy gardening