September is the month the fog forgets to come in.
Everyone on the coast knows this, and nobody visiting believes it. The tourists pack up after Labor Day, and the sun comes out behind them like it was waiting for the house to empty. The warm days Fort Bragg was promised in July arrive now, late and not the least bit sorry.
Inland it runs the other way. Ukiah has had its summer, all of it, at full volume, and the garden shows it. The squash leaves have gone to leather. The tomatoes are still producing, the way a tired band still plays its last set.
Same county, same month, two different gardens.
The tomato reckoning
Every tomato plant in the county seems to have agreed on the same week. Nothing for two months, then a counter full of them, then a second counter.
On the coast, this is the window. Fruit that sat green and stubborn through the gray weeks finally colors up in the September sun, so leave it on the vine as long as you dare. Pinch off the new flowers. A blossom in mid-September won’t make a ripe tomato before the cold, and the plant should spend what it has on the fruit already hanging.
Inland, pick often and pick a little early. A tomato that finishes coloring on the kitchen counter tastes nearly as good as one that finished in the valley heat, and it doesn’t split.
Then there’s the zucchini. Somewhere under a leaf the size of a snow shovel, one has grown into a baseball bat while you weren’t looking. Pick it. Check again in two days.
The second spring
September is a do-over. The soil is still warm, the days are getting shorter, and most cool-season crops come up faster now than they ever did in March.
Sow lettuce, spinach, arugula, radishes and cilantro right in the bed. Set out broccoli, cabbage and kale, whether you started them in July or bought them last weekend. Inland, give the young plants afternoon shade for their first couple of weeks. On the coast, stand back and let them go.
Leave room for garlic and fava beans. They’ll want the ground next month.
Hold the shrubs
It’s tempting to plant the big stuff while the weather is this kind. Don’t. Trees, shrubs and natives want to go in when the rains start, so winter waters them in for free. Spend September deciding where they’ll go, pulling the spent summer annuals and working compost into the empty beds.
The shopping can wait a few weeks. The Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens holds its Fall Plant Sale Oct. 10 through 18 at its nursery on North Highway 1 in Fort Bragg, with 20% off all plants and 30% off for members. Members get a preview party the evening of Friday, Oct. 9. The sale list runs to rhododendrons, heaths and heathers, natives, perennials, ground covers and pollinator plants, which puts them in your hands right about when the ground is ready for them.
If you’d rather do something with plants besides dig, the Gardens has a cyanotype printing class Sunday, Sept. 20, with Shane Powers of Fort Bragg’s Cyan Art Studio. You lay leaves and flowers on treated paper and let the sun do the printing, which on the coast this month it is finally willing to do.
The rest of the month
Keep watering. Fog or no fog, the ground is as dry now as it gets all year. Save seed from the best of anything open-pollinated, the bean that never quit or the marigold everyone asked about. Pick up fallen apples before the yellowjackets and the deer hold a meeting about them.
Then pull a chair into the sun. On the coast you waited since June for it, and October can take it back any afternoon it likes.
