Figure Out What's Still Worth Planting This September

Not sure what still has enough time to give you a harvest before the days get too short—or why September planting advice seems completely different depending on who you ask?

Get my free printable September Planting Guide & Workbook and use the same method I use to figure out what still makes sense to plant in my own fall garden.

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WHAT'S INSIDE

Build a September Planting Plan for Your Own Garden

Inside the printable, I'll show you:

How to find your average first frost date and approximate 10-hour daylight date—and why I use both when I’m planning my fall garden.
A simple worksheet to calculate whether a crop still has enough growing time left based on the days to maturity on your seed packet.
How I use a small mature-before-short-days cushion plus extra time for slower fall growth without double-counting either one.
A quick-reference guide for lettuce, spinach, kale, radishes, brassicas, root vegetables, herbs, garlic, and cover crops.
The varieties I’ve actually grown, including the faster options I’d look at when the fall growing window is getting short.
A printable succession planting planner for lettuce, spinach, radishes, and other quick crops.
A final Plant Now / Plant Later / Skip This Year worksheet so you can narrow everything down to the three things you actually want to plant this month.

Get the Free Guide

Why I Made This

I used to look at September planting lists and think that if something could grow in cool weather, I could still plant it.

But that isn’t always how fall gardening works.

As the days get shorter, growth slows. A crop can look perfectly healthy and still run out of time to give you the harvest you planted it for.

I’ve had that happen with carrots, broccoli, lettuce, and plenty of other crops over the years. And what finally clicked for me was that I couldn’t just look at temperature or my USDA zone.

I needed to look at how much useful growing time I actually had left.

This guide takes the way I now plan my own fall garden and turns it into a simple workbook you can use with the seed packets you already have.

Make Your September Plan Before You Plant

You don’t need to grow everything that can technically go in the ground this month.

Use my Danvers planting in Upstate South Carolina as a worked example, then create a plan based on your carrot variety, your growing space, your daylight, and your local conditions.

By the end, you’ll have your estimated planting window, sowing method, germination plan, and follow-up dates together on one printable page.