In September, summer turns to fall, but summer never goes willingly in Southern California. It always kicks us with one last heat wave. When I was a kid, school started right after Labor Day, and that first week back at school was always the hottest of the year. (Hot like peppers.) Do you remember it that way too?
This year, the first full week of September peaked at 111 degrees at my place. In 2025, the average temperature of the first week of September was 99.6 degrees. In 2024, it was so crazy hot that I wrote this post: “Lessons from the September 2024 heat wave.”
Nonetheless, now is the time to start the vegetable plants that like to grow through the cool fall and winter. A food gardener who has no gaps in harvest must simultaneously have one eye on today and one eye a few months down the calendar.
Let’s get into specifics.
VEGETABLES
Sow seeds of:
Broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce, beets, carrots, parsnips, spinach, chard, peas, radish, turnips, parsley, cilantro, potatoes.
Plant seedlings of:
Broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale and other greens (mustard, chard, collards).
FRUIT TREES
It is here at the end of summer when a fruit tree will really tell you if it hasn’t been getting enough water over summer. On citrus, the leaves will cup like taco shells if the tree is thirsty. On most other trees, the leaves will droop. They’ll also get brown tips or margins.
Deciduous fruit trees are done growing for the year. Peaches, plums, apples, apricots — they’re just going to hold what leaves they have until later in fall, but they won’t be making new ones. So if you prune them now, don’t expect new growth until next spring.
Avocados, however, will make one more flush of new leaves starting in September or October. Look forward to that.
HARVEST
What can you be harvesting from your yard here in September?
Vegetables:
Tomatoes, tomatillos, beets, peppers, pumpkins, eggplant, squash, basil, cucumber, melons, beans, corn.
For some of these crops, you need to have planted back near the summer solstice (about June 20) to get yields in September. Earlier plantings often burn out before September, and later plantings won’t yield until October, if at all.
For example, if I want tomatoes from September into the fall, I plant between mid-June and July 1.
Fruit:
Pomegranates, passion fruit, figs, dragon fruit, avocados (Lamb, Reed, Hellen, Nimlioh, Mexicola), raspberries, pears (Fan-Stil), apples (Fuji, Hudson’s Golden Gem), grapes (Princess).
MISCELLANEOUS
Reflect on the summer before memory fades. Did your watering work well or was it insufficient for some plants sometimes? Did your planting dates work well? Put a note on the calendar for next year.
At the end of summer, I’ll leave you with this. I once encountered a helpful way to remember the different vegetables we grow and eat in the warm seasons versus the cool seasons. In the warm seasons we mostly eat the fruits of vegetables. Fruits? Tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, melons — they are all fruit, botanically speaking (“a structure that holds seeds inside”).
In the cool season, we mostly eat the leaves, roots, and flowers of vegetables. Think of the leaves of lettuce, the roots of carrots, and the flowers of cauliflower and broccoli plants. If you don’t pick a head of cauliflower or broccoli on time, it becomes a globe of yellow flowers.
See more Yard Posts about specific months here.
For my posts on growing specific vegetables or fruit trees, peruse the list here.
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Thanks, Greg! Another informative post with awesome pics!
Thanks for saying so!
You are inspiring me to branch out and plant during the cool season! Love all the cute pics of your family!
Hurray! And thanks!
Just remember how low the sun’s angle gets in winter, and beware of planting cool-season vegetables just north of a tree, wall, or building. They might be in too much shade to grow well, particularly come December.
Hi Greg! As always, I am loving your website 🙂 Do you ever plant “green beans” in the fall? I am in Riverside, we have similar fall/winter weather to your area–I think. Thanks! ~Danielle
Hi Danielle!
While I don’t ever plant green beans in the fall, I have had some excellent green bean crops go into the fall. They’re similar to tomatoes in that if we have a warm and dry fall — like we’re having right now — the plants from summer will continue to produce well until beyond Thanksgiving. (Are you still getting tomatoes right now? I am still getting good ones, especially the small-fruited types.)
But I think you’ll find that if you start green bean plants right now (mid-November), they’ll start to grow but they won’t mature and produce beans by the time it inevitably gets too cold in December or January. My mature green bean plants have always finally gotten zapped by successive cold nights or little frosts sometime in December or January. That’s what normally happens.
Thanks Greg, your answer, as always, is very helpful. I do have tomatoes still growing right now and peppers. I started some green bean seedlings but will replace them with something else more weather appropriate . Your website and help are wonderful. Thanks again, your time is greatly appreciated!
Hi I just read your post about a year ago on the Dapple Dandy Pluot – do you fertilize your tree? Curious as to with what and when. I am making a chart for all of my trees. My tree is less than a year old. it did produce 2 pluots this year.
Hi Pam,
I don’t fertilize my Dapple Dandy pluot tree, not exactly. I do keep a layer of arborist wood chips under it for mulch, and those wood chips do break down to fertilize the tree eventually.
Hi Greg – we do the same, mulch, but I read where that depletes/negates the nitrogen in the break down process. Do you think if I baby it by placing plentiful handfuls of earth worms around it that will be “sufficient”? No 10-10-10 ???? Thank you
Hi Pam,
Don’t worry about the nitrogen depletion idea. I’ve never seen evidence of it on any species of fruit tree that I’ve grown or observed.
Read some more about using wood chips as mulch, and ultimately a source of nutrients, here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315662938_Using_arborist_wood_chips_as_a_landscape_mulch_WSU_Extension_Fact_Sheet_FS160E
I want to plant lettuce from seed in September. Can I plant seeds directly in ground now? I am in Palos Verdes (zone 14). Thank you!
Hi Anna,
Yes, you can sow lettuce seeds directly in the ground here in late September in Palos Verdes. Just be aware that lettuce seeds need to be sown shallowly (don’t bury them under much dirt or compost) and they need to be kept consistently moist. So the challenge is just to maintain that moisture in the top level of soil while the seeds are germinating.
As long as I can remember my mom always said it’s horrible for kids that first week of school (Labor Day). She came here in the 40’s. My memory has always been the same. It’s easy to find us old timer native southern Californians with that one question.
On another note, my mom has always said that November is the nicest month in San Diego. I tend to agree.
Regarding your question. It’s September 15 and I’m still harvesting Okra and Kale. South Orange County.
Ahh, recalling the start of school after Labor Day. I would sew up my new “winter” wardrobe for the start of school only to need to pull out my summer clothes for the first couple weeks. That would be here in Corona. Biggest change is that kids today start school the 3rd week of August!
I’m in my second planting of brassica seedlings as white moths absolutely destroyed the first batch. For the second batch, I built a Minnie hoop house out of old wire, free nursery trays and tulle from my sewing stash. I find it difficult to not take destruction of my seedlings personally and I give the stink eye to the moths whenever I see them. How dare they eat my seedlings down to the nub! This is the first year that I’ve ever seen the destroyers in my garden.
I’m a new subscriber, thanks much for this! Never done much with fall gardening, but in SoCal I’ll try it (I’m in South Bay of LA)! God knows I’ve got lots of extra seeds!:)
Hi Ray,
Welcome. See this post: “Fall is my favorite vegetable growing season in Southern California”
Great stuff, Greg. Two additions:
(1) A great winter crop is broccoli rabe (rapini) which has gotten ridiculously expensive in the stores (if you can even find it). Plant by seed after the first good rain.
(2) Basil won’t make it into winter usually, so over the next month or so pick what you can, make pesto sauce and freeze for use over the winter.
I like it! Both are excellent additions. Thank you, JP.
Ah, the start of the school year in the Chino Valley smog, stifling heat, no air conditioning, hay dust and the fragrance of dairies in the air. This was the 1960’s the year starts with air raid drills, and the field stripping is done with diesel fuel.
Our family garden would have been in transition. Tomatoes and bell peppers and ONE hot pepper plant are finishing their seasons. Corn has been harvested, shucked, blanched, and cut from the cob then frozen. The first jars of Chow-chow that was made in late Spring from green tomatoes and Bell peppers are being opened. Starter trays of winter vegetables such as Cauliflower,Turnips, and Broccoli are being shielded from the 100°+ heat. Beets and carrots are directly sown in the sandy loam of the Valley. Alfalfa was still grown in the valley, so you could easily obtain seed for your garden. Manure was more than plentiful but the salt has to be leached out first from the dairyman’s salt lick. We had a hand cultivator to turn under the alfalfa and manure then water, water, water for the composting and leaching process. The leaves of walnut trees were still green with a tinge of yellow. Alerting you to a new chore in addition to stalls and feeding if the animals. Huge piles of walnut leaves larger than Dad’s hand wait for each afternoon had to be raked before supper, but after homework. That is how we moved from the excessive heat into the cooling and Santa Ana windy days of Fall.
Hi Don,
I love this recollection! And though I grew up in the 1980’s, Chino still smelled like a dairy when I was a kid. Relatives lived in Corona, so I frequently drove through Chino from our home in Glendora to visit them, long before the 71 was the freeway it is today. This was so fun to read and brought back many memories.
Hi Greg. I got a very late start gardening this year; late June or so. Beans and brassicas are doing well, and there’s hope for a small corn harvest. Some winter squash plants volunteered and small kabucha type fruits have set. Do you have suggestions to increase the likelihood that I’ll get mature squash?
Hi Peggy,
The only thing I can think of is removing all small, new fruit and flowers so that the plant sends all of its energy into the few biggest that you hope it will mature. Otherwise, you’re getting into serious intervention like putting a makeshift greenhouse over the plant or a reflective wall behind the plant in order to increase heat later in fall. Never know though, we might end up with an Indian Summer that keeps these squash happy.
I loved starting school after Labor Day. One last holiday before getting back to school. My kids start almost a month before Labor Day now, and half of our summer break is gloomy in Southern California.
This was exactly the garden info I have been needing!! Now I’m off to read your other fall posts. Thanks for sharing!