Early November Garden To-Do List
I really don’t want to use the air conditioner in November, but it’s been so warm I might just have to break down and do it soon. At least we have some glorious yellow, orange, and red leaves fluttering to the ground and crunching underfoot to let us know that it is indeed fall.
Oh, and the time change. The dreaded time change. Gone are the days of getting home from work and heading straight to the garden to do a few chores. Welcome to “Harvesting by Headlamp Season.” Luckily, the few chores that are left can be squeezed into an hour or two on the weekends.
As Sarah wrote in her article about winter wellness, getting outside this season is soooo good for us. With that in mind, let’s get to the chores.
Winding down: Read through the end of season checklist and see if you can get started on any of these chores yet. If you have a fall garden growing strong, you may space out these tasks over a few weeks.
Planting: Focus on bulbs: garlic, onions, shallots in the veggie garden. And tulips, daffodils, alliums, and snowdrops in the flower beds.
Harvest: The fall harvest is really tuning on now. I’ve seen gorgeous arugula, kale, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, collards, and radishes ready to eat in gardens all over Middle Tennessee.
AND some folks have even achieved that rare miracle of having tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro all ready to pick at the same time. Who’d of thunk November would be pico de gallo season, but here we are.
Dill, parsley, fennel, chives, oregano, and rosemary are looking great, too.
Mint is making a glorious comeback in lots of gardens. Harvest and dry some for winter teas.
Thinning: Thin root veggies to final spacing. Typical spacing is 1-2 inches for radishes and carrots and 3-4 inches for beets. Simply snip the unwanted seedlings at soil level with a pair of scissors.
We often recommend harvesting just the outer leaves of each lettuce plant, but if they are planted close together and getting fairly large, you can snip out some entire plants at soil level to give the remaining plants more room to bulk up. Same with kale or spinach of you planted them in bunches.
On a larger scale, it may be time to remove entire crops. My personal garden style is to let plants live as long as they want to, hoping I can harvest every last pepper or leafy green they can produce. Though I picked a couple of servings of okra this week, even I am just about ready to cut down the 10-foot tall stalks. There comes a time in fall when I’m just done with dragging the stepladder out to the garden. It’s au revoir to okra until next summer.
Frost protection: The warm weather has been pretty great over the past few weeks, but we know it won’t last forever. Be prepared with hoops and frost cloth if you want to keep your garden going all winter long. Even among frost-tolerant plants, there are different degrees of “tolerance.” Lettuce is one of the most sensitive of our fall/winter crops, especially if the temperature drops suddenly. For the best chance of keeping your lettuce happy, cover your garden if the temperature is forecasted to drop below 28 degrees.
Pests: As long as it’s warm, we still have pests. Check the undersides of leaves for aphids and remove the leaf entirely or spray the bugs off with water. You can hand-pick caterpillars, but spritzing your brassicas every 10 days with BT will make sure you don’t miss the tiny, and very hungry, versions. If squirrels or chipmunks are disturbing your tiny seedlings, use a cloche to protect the plants.
Feed & Mulch: You can let the leaves that fall into your garden stay there, or even proactively add a layer of chopped leaves to your beds to serve as insulation and slowly break down and feed the soil over winter. Keep them away from tiny seedlings though, so sunlight can reach the new babies. Leaves provide good mulch for your berries, too.
Journal: What can you do on those dark evenings when you can’t be out in your garden? Write down reflections of the season, dreams for next year, and lists of veggies and herbs you’d like to grow. A flip through your camera role might jog your memory.
