September is the month the season turns in Missoula.
Our average first fall frost is September 22, which means everything you do this month is either about getting the harvest in or getting the garden ready to sit through winter. The tomatoes are still coming, the peppers finally sized up, and somewhere around the third week you will be out with old bedsheets covering things at nine at night. It is also the last month for a few of the events that have been running all summer, so if you have been meaning to get to one of them, this is it.
Here are the plant and garden events worth knowing about in Missoula this September.
1. Missoula Farmers’ Market (Saturdays and Tuesdays)
Days: Saturdays 8:00 AM – 12:30 PM, and Tuesdays 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: North end of Higgins Avenue, next to the railroad tracks
September is the last month for the Tuesday evening market. It runs June through September and then it is done until next summer, so if you have been telling yourself you will get down there after work one of these days, you have four Tuesdays left.
The Saturday market keeps going into October, though the hours shift to 9:00 AM once the mornings get cold. September is when the tables are at their best in a way that is different from August. You still get tomatoes and corn, but now the winter squash, potatoes, onions, and storage crops start showing up alongside them. If you want to put food away rather than eat it this week, this is the month to buy in quantity.
2. Clark Fork River Market (Saturdays)
Day: Saturdays, 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: 225 S. Pattee Street, along the river downtown
September is the last month of the 8:00 AM summer hours here. From October the market opens at nine, and in November it moves indoors to Ryman Street for the winter.
The flower growers are worth a look this month even if you are only there for vegetables. Dahlias and late-season cut flowers are at their peak right up until the frost takes them, and the growers selling them can usually tell you exactly which varieties made it through last September and which ones did not. That is the kind of local knowledge you cannot get from a catalog.
3. Adult Bug Hunting and Happy Hour
Date: Friday, September 4
Time: 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: Fort Missoula Native Plant Garden, 404 H Road
Cost: $15 for MNHC members, $20 for everyone else
This is exactly what it sounds like. Two hours in the native plant garden on a Friday evening, looking for insects, with a drink in your hand. The Montana Natural History Center runs it for adults, and early September is a good time for it because the late-season pollinators are still working the asters and goldenrod.
There is a practical reason to go beyond the fun of it. Most of us only learn to recognize the bugs that eat our plants, and we end up treating anything with six legs as a problem. Spending an evening actually looking at what lives in a healthy native garden is the fastest way to start telling the difference between something worth worrying about and a beneficial insect doing its job.
4. Fort Missoula Native Plant Garden Volunteer Mornings
Dates: Sundays, September 6, 13, 20, and 27
Time: 9:00 – 11:00 AM
Location: Fort Missoula Native Plant Garden, 404 H Road
Cost: Free
September is the last month of the volunteer season at the Native Plant Garden. The programs run May through September, so these four Sundays are the end of it until spring.
Fall work in a native garden is different from the weeding you do in June. You are cutting back, collecting seed, and deciding what gets left standing over winter, which is a genuinely useful thing to watch someone knowledgeable do. Most of us cut everything down in October out of habit. A lot of native perennials are better left up, because the stems shelter overwintering insects and the seed heads feed birds through the cold months. Two hours here will change how your own yard looks in November.
5. Birding Extravaganza at the Fort Garden and River
Date: Tuesday, September 15
Time: 9:00 – 11:00 AM
Location: Fort Missoula Native Plant Garden and the river
Cost: $20 for MNHC members, $25 for everyone else
Mid September is migration season, which is why this one lands where it does on the calendar. The group covers the garden and then the river corridor, and you get two hours with people who know what they are looking at.
If you have ever wondered whether the plants you choose actually matter to anything besides you, this is a good way to find out. The birds moving through in September are feeding on seed heads and the insects those plants support. Watching where they land in a mature native garden is a fairly direct lesson in which plants earn their space.
6. The First Frost, Around September 22
Average date: September 22
What it affects: Tomatoes, peppers, squash, basil, cucumbers, and anything else that came from somewhere warmer than here
This is not an event anyone is hosting, but it is the date that shapes the whole month, so it belongs on the list. Our average first fall frost in Missoula is September 22. Average means exactly that. It can come a week early, and in a good year you might get into October before it does.
Watch the forecast from about the tenth onward. When a night in the thirties shows up, cover what you want to keep. Old sheets, row cover, or a light blanket over hoops all work, and none of it needs to be fancy. The point is to trap the ground heat, so anything that reaches the soil on both sides does the job. Take covers off in the morning or things cook underneath on a sunny day.
Green tomatoes will ripen indoors if you pick them once they have started to lighten, and a frosted pepper plant is finished for the year, so pick everything before the first hard night rather than after. Anything you do not get to can go straight onto the beds as mulch. There is no need to pull plants and haul them off. Cut them at the soil line, leave the roots to break down in place, and let the soil life do the work over winter.
7. Garden City Harvest Pumpkin Party (Mark Your Calendar)
Date: Saturday, October 17
Time: 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Location: PEAS Farm, 3010 Duncan Drive
This one is in October rather than September, but it is worth putting on the calendar now because it is the fall event people forget to plan for. Garden City Harvest opens the PEAS Farm for the afternoon to celebrate the harvest, and it is one of the better family things Missoula does in the fall.
Their Stock Up fall vegetable sale follows a few days later on October 21 and 22, which is when you buy storage crops in bulk from a local organic farm. If your own garden did not give you the winter squash and potatoes you hoped for, that sale is the fix.
September rewards paying attention. Watch the forecast, get the harvest in before the cold night that is coming, and resist the urge to strip the garden bare afterward. What you leave standing feeds something through the winter and feeds the soil by spring.
If the season got away from you this year, or the plants at your office have been quietly declining while you dealt with everything else, that is what we are here for. Whether you want help from a Missoula plant care specialist or you are ready to plan a vegetable garden that actually works in this climate, Garden City Plant Care is here to help.