Texas · Prairies & Great Plains · hardiness zone 9a
Now
35°C · Clear
Today
39° / 27°
Rain, 7 days
0 mm
Season
Fall · frost in ~92 d
Above about 32 °C tomatoes drop their flowers and lettuce turns bitter.
Writing your field guide — reading the forecast, the moon and the map…
Overhead · San Antonio, Texas
The two clocks nothing on the ground can argue with: the length of the day, and the phase of the moon.
The sun
12h 21m of light
Sunrise
07:18
Solar noon
13:29
Sunset
19:39
A month from now the day will be 0h 53m shorter. Enough light for steady growth.
Right now · San Antonio, Texas
Nothing here is a guess. Each of these is read from this week's forecast and this location's climate record, and each one is pushing the season one way or the other.
33.1 °C soil · 0.0 mm
Warm but dry. Decomposition stalls without moisture — water the compost heap like a plant, and don't expect mushrooms.
Fungi and bacteria turning last season into next season's soil. The same warm, wet window that runs a compost heap also fruits the mushrooms.
0.0 mm / 7 days
Only 0.0 mm over seven days. A garden wants roughly 25 mm a week — water deeply twice rather than lightly every day.
Sets the pace for everything: germination, fungal fruiting, slug nights, and how a river runs for the next three days.
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The moon
Waxing Crescent
11% lit · waxing · day 3 of 29.5
Planting by the moon: New to first quarter: sow leafy crops and anything harvested for its leaves — lettuce, spinach, brassicas, herbs.
Fishing: good — feeding peaks in the days either side of new and full, and around moonrise and moonset.
Turn of the season
Fall equinox
Sep 22 · 7 days away
About 92 days to the average first frost (Dec 15).
Next moons
302 frost-free days
Typically Feb 16 to Dec 15 here. Coldest night in the next week: 22.9 °C.
The hard edge of the growing season. Ice inside a leaf ruptures its cells — one night ends a tomato and sweetens a parsnip.
33.1 °C
Hot soil: germination drops off above 30 °C and roots slow. Mulch, shade the row, and sow late in the day.
Seeds read soil temperature, not the calendar. Six centimetres down is where the decision gets made.
12h 21m
Losing about 2 minutes of daylight a day.
The one thing weather can't change. Plants count photoperiod to decide when to bolt, bulb, flower and go dormant.
Waxing Crescent · 11%
Waxing, 3 days old. Full moon in 11 days. Fishing outlook: good.
It moves water — in the sea, in a lake's edge, and, by long tradition, in the sap of a plant. Fish feed hardest on the days around new and full.
Found near San Antonio · September
283 species have been recorded within about 40 km of here in September, from verified public observations. These are the ones we have written up, ordered by how often they turn up.

245 records within 40 km this month

43 records within 40 km this month


1 record within 40 km this month
Here, look on the poplar and aspen and maple and elm and willow.
Recorded near you this month. We have no identification guidance for these, so treat them as a list of things to go and learn — from a regional key or someone who knows them — not as a list of things to pick.
Fungi
Your woods
The commonest trees recorded nearby, most often seen first. Most of the good mushrooms are tied to a particular tree, so this is the first thing to know about a wood.
Know these first
3 species on our hazard list have been recorded near here this month. Learn these before you learn anything you intend to eat.
Toxicodendron radicans
Phytolacca americana
Next
Coming into season in the next month or two near San Antonio, Texas. Seasons shift a week or two with the weather, so treat these as things to keep an eye on rather than dates.
flowerpot parasol
Leucocoprinus birnbaumii
19 records nearby
Plants

Lindheimer's Senna
Senna lindheimeriana
535 records nearby

Tievine
Ipomoea cordatotriloba
508 records nearby

silverleaf nightshade
Solanum elaeagnifolium
418 records nearby

Turk's cap
Malvaviscus arboreus
369 records nearby

Texas creeping-oxeye
Wedelia hispida
344 records nearby

straggler daisy
Calyptocarpus vialis
339 records nearby
Photographs and records from iNaturalist, used under their open licences and credited to their photographers.
Chlorophyllum molybdites
These are recorded within about 40 km of here in this month, from verified public observations. It is not a complete list of what is dangerous — nothing is — and a species missing from it may still be in your woods. Never eat anything identified from a photograph and a description alone.