SEPTEMBER 2026-09 Volume 1, Number 9
Words and photos by Mike Evans
September is the month we like to call “Post-Summer.” Right before Fall. Many of us (all of us?) will be happy to see this last summer in the rear view mirror. Brutal heat waves that all seemed to connect to make one long heat wave. If your garden plants suffered sunburn, root rot, desiccation, or any other associated malady, welcome to the club. If certain plants went downhill fast, and a fancy diagnosis would help ease the pain, let’s call it “episodic environmental” demise and/or at best, damage. Consolation: Fall is right around the corner. We can still get plenty hot with drying winds off the land in autumn, but the days are shorter, the nights cooler, and the heat waves less severe. Typically, rains don’t arrive until Winter, but we’re having a crazy year so anything might happen. And as always with weather, will happen.
Current events, history, review, and notes
By review, we recognize six seasons in our horticultural year’s natural cycles.
Post-Summer – September – farewell hot and dry, hello cool and moist, transition month.
Fall – October, November – rains commence, many garden tasks, fall flowers.
Winter – December, January – rain, short cool days, calming dormancy, winter flowers.
Spring – February, March, April – more rain, birds, butterflies, life abounds, abundant flowers.
Pre-Summer – May – farewell cool and moist, hello hot and dry, transition month.
Summer – June, July, August – judicious watering, long hot days, seeds, summer blooms.
In the News
Happy to report we have begun construction on a new native plant nursery in our new home at ENC/Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Modjeska Canyon, Orange County. We started building a shade house using materials repurposed from the Tree of Life Nursery structures. The site is peaceful and uniquely beautiful, one of the quietest places you can simply drive to in all of southern California.
We are so thankful to Bo Glover and Lori Whalen, President and Vice President of Environmental Nature Center (ENC) who invited us to establish our headquarters and build a nursery at their Tucker facility in the Santa Ana Mountains. Many who are reading this frequently visit and support ENC. Thank you. If you have never been, please plan to visit soon and visit often.
The Newport Beach facility houses their headquarters, a visitor center, nature pre-school, small gift shop and several acres of mature nature-based plantings, representing and providing habitat for local wildlife. Their Tucker facility is rustic and wild, with offices, a small museum and gift store… and will soon include “Modjeska Nursery, Native Plants & Seeds,” a CNHF/ENC collaboration. Both places are super kid-friendly. The Environmental Nature Center is famous for their transformative school programs, ongoing educational events, and a nature experience with town all around.
Thanks again to our friends Bo and Lori, the entire staff, and the ENC Board of Directors for including us in your long term plans. Good times ahead.
Native horticulture this month
Happy New Year!, or at least that was the word around Tree of Life on September 15, back in the day. We figured that to be the date when we had “turned the corner” on summer, with cooler nights, shorter days, and soils warm enough to promote plant growth, but cool enough to be well within the safe zone when soil pathogens are dormant. Also, a lot of our propagation started on that date. Fond memories of New Year’s Day, year after year at TOLN.
Watering
Hopefully your Deep Soak plus Refreshing Sprinkle (DS + RS = Success) brought you success in your summer watering regimen. You may need one more DS before the rains come. And keep up on the RS in the evenings, especially if we see a few hot days or days with drying winds.
Pruning, Weeding, Feeding, Mulching / Top Dress
All the garden tasks you may have been postponing can be commenced late in September and early October. Shape plants and head them back now. Wait a couple more weeks to start thinning them as necessary. Wait for October for feeding and mulching if you plan to do either. More detail in next month’s newsletter.
Troubleshooting – Varmints, Pests and Diseases
If you used Safer Insecticidal Soap to treat any injurious plant pests, like aphids and their kin, spider mites etc. (see the summer month newsletters), you may need one or two follow up treatments now to get the recently hatched generations. You can safely substitute Neem Oil or add it to the Safer Soap mix, because the danger of any sort of leaf sunburn is now lessened.
Adding plants and seed
Yay! The time you have been patiently waiting for has arrived… planting season. Safe now, but even safer starting October 1, though the extended forecast this year is for the last half of September to be cooler than normal. So let’s get out there and plant baby, plant.
My Patio Re-wild (small space)
This is the perfect time to start potting up those specimens that need bigger containers, a delightful activity, one of my personal favorites. I like the chain reaction created by freeing one pot as the plant moves to a new pot. You can just keep finding new plants that need more room, and hopefully your newly emptied pot will always do the job for the next plant.
Phytophilia
A big reciprocal “Thank You!” The plants appreciate all our effort getting them through a tougher-than-normal summer. And we appreciate the life they breathe into our lungs as we care for them.
Re-wild Principles
Plant the companions. Thinking of a new plant for a spot you’ve been watching all summer? Decided on a plant? Great. Consider planting a few colleagues, associates, companions, partners, friends, and relations who will complement the main plant and bring diversity to the spot. For instance if you have room for a coffeeberry, you might think about also planting iris, yerba buena, heuchera, and monkeyflower to bring a whole new community into that part of your garden. Plus a few new rocks might be in order…
Important Review
Post Summer September
CalNativeHort / ENC alliance at Tucker
Happy New Year!
One more DS, keep up on the RS
OK to start your garden chores
Finish them off, injurious plant pests
Planting Time!
Transplanting Time!
Reciprocal Thank Yous all around
You’ve got a friend in me. Plant companions.
Engage
A topo map is laid out before me on our dining room table, ceremoniously unfolded, revealing its telltale contour lines and my cryptic pencil notes. The window at my side is open, has been all night, and with two good hours left till sunrise, the air feels cool for the first time in months. The map, a USGS 7.5 Minute Quadrangle entitled “Santiago Peak,” shows, at its western edge, Modjeska Canyon where I am headed after breakfast. Simple curiosity coaxed me to retrieve this map earlier, nested among a dozen in a file labeled “Santa Anas.”
This one was made in 1954. I’ll bet I bought it in ‘74 when you could send 50 cents to Denver and get, rolled in a cardboard tube, your map mailed back to you. I’ve no idea how many of these things I’ve got folded and filed, sorted generally by region, a couple hundred maybe, all very dear to me because they depict the land that I love.
Today the plan is to keep setting posts for a new shade house at the nursery we are building. But the cool draft from the open window is calling me to dig out a couple related topos, useful for hiking. The hot summer caused my dog and me to lay low. He’s getting older (I insist I am not!) and the question is, who needs a 100 degree trail trial at our age?
Fall will usher in a new propagation season and perfect moments for planting, but also some time for genuine play in and on the landforms so precisely rendered by the United States Geological Survey on any and every one of their marvelous topographic quadrangles. Long summer behind us, let’s grab a map, pack a warm shirt, and head out there. On our cherished treasures of paper, we’ll add a few new notes in pencil.
