November - An unexpected flurry

When I planned my Potting Shed Printables, I stopped at October.

Surely November is the month for putting one’s feet up in anticipation of the marathon that is The Christmas Season. The month for eating apple crumbles and cheese with membrillo. But now November is here, I find myself still drawn into the field. The kitchen table is still covered in compost and sweet pea labels. The kitchen windowsill holds vases of extremely tatty cosmos, for the seeds rather than the flowers. The boot room is still full of bulbs in bags and boxes.

The weather is mild and I will push out the joy of the gardening year for just a little longer.

So here are your jobs for November.

Narcissi

Not tulips yet, unless you are up north. Night temperatures should be consistently below ten degrees and I for one, like to wait for the first frost before I commit them to the ground. Narcissi aren’t so fussy (also fritillaria and crocuses) and I will be doing mine this week. Becca of The Garden Gate Flower Company, in between recording the Gather Christmas videos, gave some top tips for spring bulb planting, which is to cram them all into pots. Why? Because the window of flowering is followed by a long period during which the dying-back leaves feed the bulb and it looks, quite frankly, rather tatty. Putting everything in black plastic pots that can be tucked into buckets or troughs, or in amongst terracotta, means that you get all of the beauty and then you can move them to a sunny but less visible spot when the show is over.

Other benefits of this not mentioned by Becca are that you don’t have to dig any holes and that it is much easier to secure chicken wire onto the top of a pot than it is bulbs in open ground. If you have any squirrels in your environs, they will find a bulb. I still haven’t got over the crocus massacre of 2020. Yes, I have tried chilli flakes, but I find only physical barriers work.

Seedling care

I don’t think my greenhouse has ever been quite so full at this end of the year, but I was all over the autumn sowings for once, and I am focusing more and more on perennials for the health of my soil. Perennials require a bit of a mindset shift; their timescales are longer and they are more sporadic in how they germinate and grow on so there are lots of seed trays that look like they have nothing in them, just sitting there.

If you are also going down this route, make sure you keep an eye on moisture levels (moist but not wet), slugs etc. Everything you do for a week when your annuals are bursting into life, you are going to have to do for months. They are a slow burn and a commitment, but the plants you will get at the end of it will repay your patience in spades.

Grow green manures in open space

So much to tell you about compost and soil. I have been going deep on learning about it and all the ideas and concepts are swirling about in my head at the moment. As soon as they have coalesced into something meaningful, I will share.

However, one metaphor has stuck in my head; that plants are like the skin on soil. Imagine bare soil as like a grazed knuckle. It is painful and horrible, and your body will do everything it can to grow skin over it again, to heal it. This time last year, I had bare soil everywhere. We worked really hard to clear and to weed, to hoe and to level, and we went into winter with these incredible bare earth beds, a gloriously blank canvas for my spring sowings and my husband was thrilled because he associates weedy growth with moral laxity. It was a disaster. I have never known weeds like we had this spring.

If only I knew then what I know now. Such an old and sad refrain.

So this year, where there are weeds, we are leaving them. Where there are gaps and bare soil we are mulching. Either with the delivery of woodchip that has just arrived or with the bundles and bundles of straw that are coming off the old thatched roof, or phacelia. Phacelia, or fiddleneck, is magic. It sprouts into life seemingly in a matter of moments, pushing living roots (the optimal mulch) into the soil, and covering the surface of the soil with a green fuzz of protection.

I thought green manures needed to have been committed to the ground by August at the lasted but The Land Gardeners were insistent; if you have any soil that is bare even for a week or so, throw a handful of phacelia down. The implication is that, if you don’t, whatever seeds in that soil is going to be called into action and the chances are they’ll be cleavers or chickweed.

Dahlias

If you haven’t lifted your dahlias, you either aren’t going to, or you are probably thinking about doing it imminently. Remember to save a few seed heads for trialling exciting new varieties next year and dry them with the stems pointing downwards to let the moisture dry out.

Saving seed

Yes, still. The air is so moist with the rain and the mist and the fog, the dogs never seem to fully dry out and neither do the seed heads. I bring stems of plants in whole, rather than waiting for the seeds to dry on the plant. The temptation is to put them somewhere warm to dry out, but be mindful that heat is the enemy of seed viability. Better to take longer at cooler temperatures than rush it and have disappointing germination next spring.

Once you are sure everything has dried, and err on the side of the drier with this (seeds should be hard and they should rustle), pack in paper envelopes and, if you have bought any shoes or a handbag recently, pop a silica sachet in with them.

Planting

It is so counter-intuitive that different bits of the planet enter winter at different times and in different ways. The air temperature is dropping (not as much as it should be for the time of year, but it is chillier) but the soil and the sea, being of greater thermal mass, hold the summer’s warmth deep. This means anything that you want to set down roots will thrive in this end of the season.

Bare root roses, fruit trees, perennials etc will all get away quickly in the spring if you plant them now.

Talking of fruit trees, prune any apple and/or pear trees. I am going to be mulching mine as well. Although they are all nearly ten years old now, the harvests this year have not been all I hoped for and I am definitely going to be tending to them more assiduously this winter to try and redress the balance and make them happier.

Talking of happier, time for tea and toast. Once fortified, I will pull on my boots and get going with the mountain of bulbs.