At 6:50 on Wednesday morning I was standing on the porch in my school clothes, holding the galvanized can at arm's length so it wouldn't drip on my shoes. That's how I knew summer was over.
School started on September 3. It's my 14th year teaching art, and Mateo started 5th grade the same morning, which makes him one of the oldest kids in his building, a fact he mentioned more than once at breakfast. I see about 480 kids a week, and the first week back is mostly names, seating charts and figuring out where all the glue sticks went over the summer. By the time I get home, the light is already low and gold, and by a quarter past seven it's too dark to tell a ripe Cherokee Purple from a shadow.
So on weekdays the garden has to mostly look after itself now. Here's what I set up in the last two weeks of August to make that possible.
What I did in August
I mulched everything. Both raised beds got a fresh three inches of the shredded leaves I bag up every fall and keep by the back steps for exactly this, and for the first time I put a layer on top of the tomato buckets on the porch too. The difference is real. A bucket that used to be dry by three in the afternoon now holds until evening.
I cut the porch down to what's worth watering. Two pots of cilantro that bolted back in June went to the compost, along with a pot of dill the swallowtail caterpillars had already finished for me, and the empty pots got stacked under the bench. Fewer pots, fewer trips to the spigot.
I moved the herbs that hate drying out (basil, parsley) into the shade by the screen door and left rosemary and thyme at the hot end, where they're happiest being ignored. And I put saucers under the terra cotta. In July a saucer can keep roots too wet, but in September that extra half-inch of water is a buffer for a long school day.
Who does what now
Mateo is in charge of the porch pots after school. It's one of his paid garden jobs, and he does it well about four days out of five. Nate is usually home from Elmsford before I'm back from school, so he picks the tomatoes and leaves them in the woven basket on the counter with the split ones on top, so I know to use those first. I water the beds and do the real picking on weekends, and sauce day has moved to Saturday instead of whenever I felt like it.
The fall lettuce I sowed in mid-August at the onion end of the west bed is up and needs nothing from me except a sprinkle when the surface dries. The peppers in the west bed basically run themselves in September. They're loaded right now, and the first ají dulce are just starting to turn red.
What slipped anyway
On Thursday the Black Cherry bucket at the sunny end of the porch was drooping at 4:30, because Mateo and I had each assumed the other had watered it. It perked up after a can and a half, and there is now a sticky note on the inside of the screen door with a checkbox for each weekday. It's the most reliable classroom management tool I know, and it turns out to work on ten-year-olds at home too.
I've also made peace with a few losses. A handful of split tomatoes go to the compost every week because nobody caught them in time, the chipmunks are getting the occasional Sungold again, and the zinnias need deadheading that won't happen until Saturday. The garden in September doesn't need to look good. It needs to keep going until frost, and with the mulch down and a kid with a checklist, it mostly is.
Friday evening I sat in the rocker for ten minutes with a bowl of Sungolds while the late sun turned the porch boards orange, then went in to start dinner. That was enough garden for one week.
