14 Must Plant September Vegetables for Fast Fall Harvests (Beginner Friendly!)

Hi everyone, today I'm going to show you crops that you can plant now in September for a fast fall harvest before cold weather sets in. Now if you're new to gardening, don't know what to do, and are still figuring this out, I hear you. I've been there too, and now I help other gardeners. I'm Kallie Kim. If this is your first Kallie Kim video, welcome to the channel. I've been gardening for over 45 years, authored three gardening books, and we've been posting videos here on our YouTube channel since 2012. So let's jump in, and for this month we're going to focus mainly on those crops that you can direct seed, or plant from seed directly in your garden beds, because it's so much easier. You can skip the whole hardening off step that way, and that way you get your veggies growing, and you can harvest them before frost, or some of these vegetables even get sweeter with frost, so that much better. So the first category we're going to direct seed are your root vegetables, and September is a great time to get these planted because the soil is very warm. They germinate quickly, and I'm going to share tips along the way. No matter if you're in the north, and your frost age is approaching, or if you're in a southern garden with frost-free winters like I am here in southern California, there's something you can plant this month in this video, no matter where you live. And no matter where you live, you do want to check your first frost date. You can find that online, or you can check our garden planner on our website. Find out when that frost date is, it's a very critical date for the fall, and then count backwards according to the dates of maturity the particular seed variety has that you're planting. So the first root vegetable we're going to plant today are radishes. Now radishes are one of the easiest ones, so if your frost age is approaching quickly, you want to plant these first, because it takes about 30 to 40 days to harvest radishes, so super quick. They're very easy to direct seed in your garden beds, or if your garden beds are still full, you could just pop up a container, throw some in there, and you'll be harvesting them in no time. Now I'm partial to the watermelon radishes. They're a gorgeous, gorgeous radish with a green outer skin. When you slice them, they have a beautiful red striping inside, and those are in my fall garden seed collection. If you're in a southern zone with frost-free winters like we are here in southern California, what you can do, a little Cali Kim hack, is plant them in the shade of, say, your squash, like I did here, because your squash is going to be dying out soon. It'll cool the soil, shade those radishes, so you can still get them germinating because the soil is nice and warm, and then you can get a harvest in about 30 to 45 days. Now the next root vegetable I love to plant in September are beets. I love the Golden Detroit Beets. They're a yellow variety, and they don't bleed quite as much as those purple varieties. They're super delicious, and you can harvest them in about 60 to 70 days. Now beet seeds are actually like little pods, and they have several seeds inside that pod, so when your beet seeds germinate, you may need to thin them out so you have plenty of room in the soil for the beets to grow those nice roots. Now one reason why I love beets is they actually do double duty. You can eat the greens, and you can eat the beets, so definitely get some beets planted this month. Many of these vegetables, by the way, are in my fall garden seed collection. All cool weather vegetables do best at temperatures under 75 degrees, so that's why it's important for you southern gardeners that at this point in time in September, when you still have a couple of months of warm weather left, that you plant them in the shade of other vegetables to give them the best chance of making it through the hot weather. Now the third root vegetable you want to plant now in September are carrots. Now carrots do take about two weeks or so to germinate. You can sprinkle them in your containers, in your garden beds. They like nice loose soil. Again, you southern gardeners, plant them in the shade of other vegetables. It'll be coming out soon, and you've got to keep the soil moist until the carrots germinate, or they won't germinate. So a little trick for keeping the soil consistently moist is to make sure it gets watered every day, number one, but then cover the area that you planted the seeds with a board, with some shade cloth, with some burlap to really hold the moisture in. And all the root vegetables, I like to sprinkle the seeds down and then put a little bit of the bumper crop soil builder over it, give it some fresh nutrients, a very light covering to protect it from the birds, and of course keep them well watered until they germinate. And another little tip to keep your seeds moist and to germinate quickly is to do a very light sprinkling of mulch. I love to use shredded straw, not too heavy though because these seeds are super tiny. If you mulch it too heavily, the seeds won't have enough energy to push up through that mulch and germinate. The next vegetable to direct seed in September are peas. Now I grow a lot of peas here in my Southern California garden in the wintertime because they grow so fast and they're a super easy crop to grow in cooler weather. And one strategy I like to do is once I pull out a crop, you remember that watermelon I harvested a few weeks ago, just pulled those plants out from here, is plant another cool weather crop in its place. This has a built-in trellis, which peas really need, and that way you're not having to take your trellises down and put them back up again. But these are the super sugar snap pea from my fall garden seed collection. I love these because they are disease resistant for one thing. Peas are kind of prone to powdery mildew, all kinds of different diseases, so they're called super sugar snap for a reason. They're also a bit more of a compact pea that goes from seed to harvest a little bit quicker than the traditional sugar snap peas. My fall garden seed collection, I really put some vegetables in there that will guarantee that you're getting harvest no matter where you live. More smaller, compact vegetables that are easier to grow. Oh and by the way, the fall garden seed collection has all new varieties in it and all my seeds are on sale right now for 50% off with the code SEEDPARTY. If you've never been to our seed shop, I encourage you to visit. Really appreciate it. We're a mom and pop shop. We pack all of our orders ourselves and we would love it if you would support our small business. We've also updated a lot of our other seed collections for fall and winter, so lots of fun stuff over there. So I'm just going to pop these seeds right in here and this area is actually partially shaded right now here in our garden, which shall help keep the seeds a little bit cooler until the temperatures get under 75 degrees. You have a nice trellis to climb on and I'll be harvesting peas in a couple of months. The next category of vegetables that we're going to plant now in September are greens. The first one being lettuce and the reason why you want to plant this in September is because if you're approaching your first frost date, if you don't get the seeds direct seeded in September, you might miss your harvest window. So super important that you direct seed these this month. For you southern gardens who are still in warm weather, what I like to do and this applies to northern gardeners too, you can plant them in the same place. As you pull out your summer crops, all you need to do is just sprinkle down your lettuce seeds and you can plant yourself an entire salad bar full of beautiful colors, textures, and flavors. My lettuce seed collection has just been updated with some brand new varieties like your heat wave mix, a bicolor romaine, all kinds of gorgeous varieties you can plant. Lettuce is so easy to plant you guys, it's one of the simplest ones. You southern gardeners, what you're going to want to do at this point is cover your newly planted lettuce seeds with my good old trusty friend some shade cloth. It will really help keep the temperatures down about 10 to 15 degrees so that your lettuce will still germinate even in hot temperatures. Of course keep it well watered but you can be harvesting your own fresh tasty lettuce in about four to six weeks. And light frosts actually make lettuce sweeter. So then you're going to have those gorgeous vibrant salads for southern gardens all winter long for northern gardeners until you get a hard frost. But some of these varieties will even last through hard frost. I've had some really hot weather lately so a little hack that I like to do is just keep my shade cloth clipped to the side of my garden beds, kind of roll it up here when I'm not using it on days that are under 90 degrees. When it's over 90 degrees or in an area where I plant a cool other vegetables like lettuce, I can just roll it down and have an instant cover for my garden bed in seconds. One of my all-time favorite greens of all time, did I say that again, is arugula. I love the peppery bite taste of arugula and it grows really well for me in the heat here in southern California but it really does love the cool weather best. Now I actually just planted some arugula seeds about five days ago. They're such a fast growing green. Look how they're just popping up here all over the place and they add a nice little zippy flavor to your salads, to your September or your winter salads. These are probably the fastest growing green ever. They'll be salad ready to harvest for baby greens in about three weeks. I've got astro arugula in my fall garden seed collection. It is absolutely amazing but I definitely recommend planting it in partial shaded areas especially in southern climates but as the weather cools down you can definitely plant it in full sun no matter where you live. The next green that is absolutely a September powerhouse, actually an all-season powerhouse, is kale. I never don't have kale growing in my garden. There's so many beautiful varieties that you can grow including this Lacinato kale which is dinosaur kale as well. This has grown in my garden all summer long and will grow through the winter. It's extremely cold hardy. See for you northern gardeners you've got to get several different varieties of kale growing. I love the Lacinato. It's these long thin leaves. It's super flavorful and I also love the red Russian kale. It's beautiful pinkish purple stalks. We love these in smoothies. It's very easy to direct seed in your garden and in my fall garden seed collection I have the blue dazzling kale which I've started from seed right here. You can also start from seed indoors if you'd like to if your garden beds are full and just put your seedlings under grow lights. Now these are actually getting a little bit leggy because they've been going indoors for a couple of months so I'll show you a little tip in just a moment if your seedlings are getting leggy but you're not quite ready to plant them out in your garden beds. Another must plant green for September are mustard greens. They do have a slightly spicy zippy flavor. That's the beauty of having a variety of greens in your garden. Now here I've direct seeded some of the scarlet frills mustard greens and my fall garden seed collection has a nice little mustard green mix called green jewel mustards and mustard greens germinate so fast. There's so many different colors and varieties. These are the Florida broadleaf mustard greens and for the most part they're fairly heat tolerant and cold tolerant so they're a great green to plant no matter if you're in the south in a warmer winter climate or in the north where it's going to be getting colder soon. You can harvest the baby greens at just a couple of weeks. These are almost like little micro greens that we could snip here or full-size greens in about a month so they really are a win-win for your September garden. Along with our root vegetables, our peas and our greens we've got to get some cool weather herbs going this month. Then we'll have a whole entire salad of vegetables to eat right from our backyard. So I like to do a lot of cool weather herbs now in September and this area is partially shaded and the first one I'm going to plant here is cilantro. Now this is a cilantro that I really really like called cruiser cilantro and you can see how they've got a really hard outer shell. They do take a bit to germinate so what I always do to help speed germination is I put them out here on my on a little board and I crush them with a brick to break that hard outer shell and as soon as I break that hard outer shell I can actually smell the cilantro or the coriander smell from the seeds. It smells really good. This will help open up that hard outer shell, speed germination and then I'm going to very carefully just move this over to my garden bed, pour them into my hand and sprinkle them right here next to Mr. Froggy. So he's going to get a nice little blanket of cilantro that'll be growing here and popping up within a couple of weeks. You can see there's already one that's popped up here right behind him. We absolutely love cilantro in our salsas and our salads. Oops got a little dirt little dirt on Mr. Froggy. So another cool other herb that I love to grow and I can actually grow it year-round here in Southern California are chives. They're very very easy to direct seed or if you have chives or have a friend growing chives you can actually separate the little clumps of chives and then spread them out all over your garden or give some to a friend. Another great direct seed herb is dill and I struggled growing dill in the summertime but in the winter here in Southern California or the fall for many of you dill loves the cool weather. You can see what the seeds look like here. These are my herb seed collection. Very easy to plant just take a pinch look for an empty spot in your garden little handful of soil and you're good to go on the dill. Super delicious in scrambled eggs or to flavor pickles with if you're still making pickles from your summer grown cucumbers. Oh and one thing I wanted to mention about cilantro. One thing I like to do is always plant some in containers as well like this one right here. That way you can take it inside and have some growing on your windowsill or under grow lights in the kitchen during the winter time. It just gives you that nice little lift when you can't get outside to garden when it's super cold. So make sure you're planning ahead for winter now. So next I'm going to plant some parsley. Parsley is in my herb seed collection and I think parsley is probably one of the most underrated herbs. It's way more than a garnish. It's super flavorful in salads and you can just sprinkle some down here in an empty spot in your garden. I'm actually planting it interplanting it in between my strawberries here which are rooting on their own. It will grow up in between the strawberries and I can harvest it and just pop it in salads on scrambled eggs. It's just such a delicious flavorful herb. You definitely have to get some planted this month too. Besides these vegetables you can direct seed in your garden for quick harvest. I also have some bonus crops for you. Now these are the brassicas, your broccoli, your cauliflower, your brussel sprouts and more mustard greens. Now the varieties that I have here are more compact quicker growing varieties that go to maturity faster so you can get a harvest before cold weather hits. Some of these you might have already started from seed indoors last month and you're ready to transplant them outside if your garden is under 75 degrees. So here I've got some DeSisco broccoli, a beautiful nice compact variety. Now the problem here in the southern California garden is it's still hot. So what I've done to counteract the hot temperatures is I've made myself a little plant nursery here in some containers. Filled it with bumper crop potting mix, added some fertilizer, planted them in. They got a little bit leggy indoors so what I did to counteract that is I planted the vegetables in deeply and then mounted up soil against the stems for some extra support. Now this will kind of be my little holding area until the temperatures cool down. I actually keep them here where they get a few hours of sun in the morning. They're shaded in the afternoon on really hot days. I cover them with shade cloth. I've got DeSisco broccoli, Long Island Brussels sprouts, a little mustard green cilantro container, and then over here I have the Michelini cabbage which is a beautiful smaller variety of bok choy that you can harvest in about 70 days. And these are the igloo cauliflower which is a nice compact variety of cauliflower. And I've done all the legwork for you. These are all in my fall garden seed collection. So if you haven't started these yet, now is a really good time to start them for your southern gardens and you can be planting them outdoors in your garden in about six weeks or in a little holding area like this until the weather gets cooler in your garden. Now it is super important if you're using these containers as a holding area for your longer growing fall vegetables. You've got to keep them well watered. Super critical so they last long enough for you to get them planted in the garden. I've got my Mr. Landscaper drip installed in these containers and you've got to keep them fertilized about once a week. I use Monterey fish and grow fertilizer. It gives them a nice steady growth and keeps them going until you can transplant them out in your garden. With all the crops I've mentioned in this video you have plenty of options no matter where you live. So leave me a note in the comments let me know which of these you're going to plant. You don't have to pick all of them but at least plant some so you have quick growing vegetables for some delicious fall harvest. And if this was your first video with me please say hello in the comments and I'll say hi back. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time in the garden.