September in My Patio Garden

September is finally here. I say that with all my Autumn-loving heart, but South Carolina hasn’t caught up with the calendar yet, so the temperatures here are still very adamantly proclaiming summer. That’s not stopping me from starting my Autumn preparations though. In the southeast you have a few precious months where you experience lovely Autumn temperatures and I want to make sure that I am ready to hit the ground running for that first crisp morning.

Part of my September plans begin in the garden. I have a very makeshift garden as the property I rent doesn’t allow planting into the ground. Instead I have been planting in every container that I can grab. I’ve even started saving my delivery boxes so that I can plant in those. I have a handful of really great “planters” from just basic supply deliveries which is saving me tons of money because planters can get expensive quick.

I already have a few plants started in some pots and containers. I have 4 collard green plants, 15 purple hulled pea plants and one very determined strawberry plant. My collard plants, pictured to the left, are still babies. I planted them at the end of August.

I’m worried the sun might still be a bit too hot for them as temperatures are still in the high 90’s where I am, but I’ve been keeping a close eye on them. I’m very new to container gardening so I am learning as I go, but I feel like I’ve had some success, though I have made some dumb decisions.

Take for instance my purple hulled peas…

I planted those in the complete wrong containers and am now in the terrible predicament of having to traumatize the plants by repotting them or sit with my fingers crossed hoping somehow this works out. A lot of the plants just don’t look well at all, but I have three that seem to be thriving.

It seems to me like the second container from the top and the bottom-most container in that standing plant holder seem to be the most successful. I am completely stumped as to why this is. They all get the same amount of sun and the same amount of water.

I really want to transplant the biggest plants to their own containers but I am absolutely terrified to do that. I’ve never had luck with transplanting anything and having it survive, but I am also equally scared of slowly watching them fail because the pot is wrong.

If you have any advice, I would love to hear it. You can see in the picture to the left that I have a little flower forming on one of them and if I am not mistaken, the flowers come first, then the pods.

I’ve definitely learned my lesson about planting recklessly though. Now I carefully think about what container I am putting my seeds in. No more purple hulled pea predicaments.

I think in the future, I’ll use that standing planter as a herb garden. I am waiting to save up some money in my garden fund to get some herb seeds. I completely emptied out my garden fund at the beginning of the month to buy some proper planters for some black seed lettuce I’m planting later in the month. My fund will reset on October 1st and I am hoping that isn’t too late to start an herb garden.

Now I would like to shift your focus to my strawberry plant. Let me tell you about this plant. I excitedly purchased a strawberry pod (is that what they are called??) in the Spring of 2025. It was in a baggie with dirt. I got it from Lowe’s.

I have never planted strawberries like that, so I had no idea what I was looking at when I pulled the strawberry bulb (??) from the package. So, I turned it around a few times in my palm and reckoned with myself that I had a 50/50 chance to plant the thing in the right direction. So, I potted it, watered it and then I waited… nothing happened. This wasn’t my first time planting something and having nothing happen, so I just assumed it was a dead pod/bulb or that I had messed it up somehow and all was lost.

So I abandoned it. Summer with it’s brutal heat came and went. Fall came and went. Winter came with a generous snowfall. Then spring and summer came and went again. At the end of summer this year, I set myself to figuring out how to garden again to supplement my grocery bill. So, I went outside and started consolidating all of my random pots of garden soil into my big standing planter. The standing planter was going to be my starting point for my new garden. So, I tipped all the random pots into the standing planter, patted the soil down and gave it a generous watering.

Since the soil had been neglected for over a year, I started watering it once in the morning, once at night, to get it ready for some new plant babies. I then did my research for what I wanted to plant first, found the purple hulled peas and ordered them.

Well, during all this research and soil regeneration, I noticed a little green sprout coming up. I first thought that maybe some bird seed had found it’s way into the planter. That wouldn’t be out of the ordinary because my bird station is a few feet from the planter and the neighborhood birds love throwing seeds around like maniacs. So, I went about my business.

But the days passed and the closer I looked at it, the more I started to wonder if it was actually a random bird seed. It didn’t look anything like I’d ever seen growing under the bird stand.

I snapped a photo and sent it to professor Google and lo and behold, my jaw dropped when I read “this looks to be a strawberry plant”.

No way.

But the strawberry plant said “Yes, way”.

Look at the state of that thing. I’m telling all my friends that as soon as this thing fruits we are all eating one of the strawberries because this thing is the immortal strawberry plant.

Needless to say the planter is hers now, so I can’t put anything in in until she stops establishing her domain. She’s sent out three satellite plants but one got fried up in the sun because it was too close to the edge and the plastic was too hot for it. I don’t know anything about growing strawberries so I have no ideas if she is doing okay or not, but I figured at this point, she’s got everything under control, so I am leaving her alone.

I mean, she’s made it this far without me.

My next plans are to set up a small table to serve as a little workstation and more raised flat space to put some smaller planters. I also have plans to plant some purple top turnips and have an especially promising tall and compact cardboard box that my new flat mop came in. I’ll also set up my new 12 inch planters (I got 2) and plant my black seeded lettuce. However, I have to wait for cooler temperatures to do that.

I’ll post some updates as they come about in the garden. Thanks for sharing my journey with me.