November Task List
If you know me, you know, I love a good checklist! Below is the task list that I’m following for the garden in November:
Sow Carrot Seed
Sow Lettuce Seeds
Plant Garlic
Plant Peas
Harvest Kale every 2-3 days
Fertilize Berries
Remove any dead foliage from plants, but leave in bed to add organic matter back
Add Compost
Add hay mulch for insulation
Leave as many stems and seeds as possible for habitat and food for birds over the winter
Let’s expand on each of these just a bit:
Sow Carrot Seed - Carrots are a pretty hardy fall and winter crop. As root vegetables, the ground essentially acts as a refrigerator and keeps them ready to pick throughout the colder months. We love having these on hand for soups and stews and even just the occasional snack. I have had the best luck in my garden with the Danver 176 carrots that I get at Pikes they are from botanical interests.
Sow Lettuce Seeds - My favorite lettuce seeds right now are the Rocky top blend. I’ve also had good success with butter crunch and even some Romain. Those won’t make it through a hard frost, but they do pretty well here in our zone.
Plant Garlic - this is my first year purchasing garlic from a reputable source to plant in my garden. I chose one hard neck and one soft neck variety because after the research that I did, I found conflicting opinions as to which is right for the warmer climate that we live in. I’ll have to report back and let you know which ones are more successful. but the varieties that I tried came from Territorial Seed Company and they were the Lorz Italian variety as well as Duganski.
Plant Peas - We love having sugar snap peas around. So before it gets way too cold, we like to make sure to plant peas in the fall.
Harvest Kale every 2-3 days - We probably grow a few more kale plants then we really need to… But our goal is to put away enough kale in the freezer to last us for smoothies throughout the entire year. We’ve definitely learned that we like the curly kale best as opposed to dinosaur kale that just has a more intense flavor.
Fertilize Berries - I put up a REEL about this the other day. But we make sure to give our berries a boost in both November and February. We use BerryTone (AFFILIATE LINK) as well as 2 to 3 inches of soil conditioner that we usually get from Home Depot. Both of these things help to acidify the soil and last year we had an incredible increase in our Berry production so I’m going to keep on keeping on with this!
Remove any dead foliage from plants, but leave in bed to add organic matter back - this is some thing that my OCD brain has a little bit of trouble with… I make sure to cut back any foliage that is creating bad airflow from my plants. If something is diseased, I remove it completely from the garden so that that diseased does not continue next year. But if the leaves are not diseased, I lay them down on top of the hay that is already being used as mulch in the garden, and let that foliage decompose back into the soil. I believe that that’s the way God intended it, even though it does tend to look a little bit messy for a couple of weeks after doing so.
Add Compost - if you’re one of my clients, you know that at every season and anytime you go to plant new plants you should be laying down 2 to 3 inches of organic compost. Do your best to make sure that you’re using compost from as local source as possible. The mushroom farm that we used to purchase compost from moved out of town… So I have found a local landscape supply that gets their compost from a cotton farm in South Georgia. I called around to a number of other landscape suppliers in the area who were unable to tell me the ingredients in their compost or the ingredients in their compost not conducive to organic vegetable gardening. Just make sure to ask questions! People are trying to sell you anything these days. …
Add hay mulch for insulation - This does so many good things for the soil structure of our gardens. It helps prevent erosion. It also helps prevent the evaporation of moisture from the soil of these things help with insulation when we have colder temperatures which prevents significant fluctuation of temperatures and therefore less shock to the roots of the plants, overall keeping them healthier.
Leave as many stems and seeds as possible for habitat and food for birds over the winter - before we came along and clearcut all of our neighborhoods the birds were able to feast on the leftover seeds from all of the plants that sprouted up throughout the spring and summer. Now, with our manicure lawns, we tend to clean up all the dead foliage and either send it to a landfill or take it off of our property in the fall and winter months. ultimately it’s much better for the ecosystem if we can leave those seeds for the birds to feed on as well as the stems to promote insect life throughout the course of the fall and winter seasons.
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