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