Welcome to Talking Manure
I will be posting regular articles about the progress in my home garden plantings and showing photos and videos of what I am up to out there.
I have a skinny backyard on a solid tiled concrete base, so it is all container growing, and my CHAT tells me there are 4 different climatic zones in this small space. I have given it orientation to the north and images of the sun’s transition at different times of the day so it can extrapolate the sun’s growing and receding periods in the yard over time.
Whilst not in an optimum planting period, I have given the lemon tree its first feed and also given the passionfruit a bit of a lift with a feed. The garden had a good soaking with Charlie Carp organic fertiliser to give them all a good start.
Here are a few videos and images of planting to date:
What to plant this week — Melbourne, 23–30 September 2026
Spring has properly arrived; the soil is waking up, the weeds know it, and the seedlings are starting to demand answers.
This week gives us two particularly useful planting windows in the traditional moon-planting calendar: a premium fruiting period on 25–26 September, followed by a root-focused window on 29–30 September.
As always with Talking Manure, the Moon gets a seat at the table — but not the casting vote. Weather, soil temperature, moisture, sunlight, wind and the actual condition of the plant in your hand still outrank lunar timing.
25–26 September — premium fruiting days
This is the traditional window for plants we grow primarily for their fruit or seed.
Think:
Tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin, beans and sweet corn.
September is already one of the busiest planting months in temperate Australian gardens. Sustainable Gardening Australia includes climbing beans, cucumber, sweet corn and tomatoes among the crops suitable for planting now once local frost risk has passed.
But Melbourne has decided to make the first fruiting window interesting.
The current South Melbourne forecast has Friday 25 September reaching about 26°C, with a high chance of showers and possible afternoon or evening thunderstorms. Saturday is forecast to be considerably cooler at around 17°C, again with a high chance of showers.
So Friday may offer excellent growing conditions — warmth and moisture — but avoid transplanting delicate seedlings immediately before a violent downpour or strong weather change.
If the soil is already wet on Saturday, don’t plant simply because the calendar says fruiting day. Give the roots air.
Good candidates this week
Tomatoes can begin moving into their warmer permanent positions where frost exposure is no longer a serious risk.
Capsicum and chilli deserve the warmest available position rather than simply the next vacant square.
Cucumbers and zucchini need room from day one. A tiny seedling can become a considerable piece of garden architecture surprisingly quickly.
Beans become particularly useful in a succession garden because they produce food while also bringing legumes into the rotation.
And before planting any of them, look upward as well as downward: where will this plant be in January, not where is the seedling today?
27–28 September — use the pause
Not every gardening day needs to be a planting day.
This is a good opportunity to:
- check irrigation
- prepare the next bed
- remove weeds before they seed
- add compost where hungry summer crops are going
- inspect seedlings for aphids, snails and other early pests
- check trellises before beans and cucumbers discover gravity
Monday 28 September currently looks substantially more settled around Melbourne, with mostly sunny conditions and a forecast maximum around 22°C.
That may be a better practical transplanting day for vulnerable seedlings than forcing them into unpleasant weather merely to hit a particular lunar window.
That is precisely why we are combining the old planting traditions with live conditions.
29–30 September — roots take their turn
The next strong traditional planting window favours crops grown principally below ground.
Think:
Carrots, beetroot, radish, onions, spring onions, leeks, garlic and similar root crops.
Carrots and radishes are both appropriate spring sowings in temperate Australia, while leeks and spring onions remain useful options at this time of year.
For the household garden, however, don’t sow the entire season’s supply at once.
This is where succession planting earns its keep.
Rather than planting 100 carrots and receiving 100 carrots at approximately the same time, sow a useful quantity now, reserve some bed space, and repeat the sowing later.
The garden then becomes a production line rather than an annual vegetable ambush.
Tuesday 29 September is currently forecast to reach around 26°C in South Melbourne, with sunshine during the day and a chance of showers later.
For direct-sown carrots and radishes, some moisture afterwards may be welcome — provided the seed bed isn’t washed away.
Talking Manure rule of the week
Don’t plant for the seedling you have today. Plant for the mature plant you will have three months from now.
A ten-centimetre zucchini seedling can eventually occupy a ridiculous amount of real estate.
An artichoke is practically a lease agreement.
Beans want something to climb.
Tomatoes can cast a substantial shadow.
And lettuce may be perfectly happy occupying the protected spaces underneath or between larger crops while conditions remain cool.
This is why companion planting is only part of the equation.
The real planting decision involves:
sunlight + mature size + root space + water + nutrient demand + season + crop rotation + companion relationships.
Rotation: don’t fill every hole
One of the easiest mistakes in a productive garden is to become so enthusiastic that every available centimetre gets planted immediately.
Leave some vacancies deliberately.
Those spaces become your next lettuce sowing, your next carrot crop, the replacement after the first radishes finish, or the place for a summer crop when the spring crop comes out.
Legumes such as beans and peas also belong in the rotation rather than being thought of solely as another harvest. Their relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria can contribute to the soil system, particularly where roots and plant residues are allowed to break down rather than every scrap being removed.
Heavy feeders such as tomatoes, brassicas, cucurbits and artichokes will generally appreciate the richer parts of that cycle.
The point isn’t to follow a rigid four-bed diagram.
It is to ask:
What should grow here next?
