GARDEN PREPARATION - NOVEMBER

For backyard gardeners the time spent in the garden amidst the last weeds and failing vegetables is rapidly diminishing, but there are still chores to do.  If you happen to think that you are  caught up outside, here are a few more chores to replenish your low guilt level; or,  you could go back and read the Garden Preparation - October  post to see what you may still need to do...

• Cleaning pots  - If you're really bored, wash and disinfect those stacked pots you put in the garage to get rid of any pests, fungi or bacteria. Fill a tub or utility sink with dish detergent and scrub the inside and outside of the pots.  To disinfect, you can either add vinegar to the detergent water or rinse the pots using a separate bleach solution.  If you  have terracotta  pots and notice a white powdery substance on them, don't worry... it's not biotic.  The stuff is just residue minerals that have leached out from fertilizer or water.

• Asparagus - If you are lucky enough to have room for asparagus in your garden, remember to cut down those dead shoots now.  

• Parsnips and leeks - Like garlic, you should mulch these. Mulching will help the parsnips through the winter, and the mulch will extend your access to fresh leeks into December.

• Bring in those plants - Want fresh herbs? Dig up rosemary, parsley, sage, chives etc. [Hint: you can use the pots that you just cleaned].  If you don't have a sun porch, maybe you can get  away with placing the plants near a south facing window; or, better yet, use your grow lights...

• Remember what you didn't like this year?  Did that plumb tomato  succomb too early to late blight? Did it taste bland? Make a note of it somewhere -- how about on that new 2019 calendar that you just received in the mail from the Friends of the Backyard Composting Society? A better idea maybe is to find one of your (very) old school notebooks and start that garden diary - winter lasts a  long time and your memory doesn't.  You might even decide to start  another gardening blog based on what you happen to remember!

• Spread your compost yet?  Missed October? - Shame. But you now have an opportunity to make amends. If you actually got a soil test done last month, November is now a good month to add any recommended amendments along with your compost.  Remember that it usually takes months for nutrient levels to change... Poisons work faster, but increasing or decreasing pH levels or the amount of magnesium etc. is a slower process.  

Source: Public domain

• Harvests: Jesrusalem archichokes - dig them now.  Kale, kale,  kale - just keep on cutting, cutting, cutting because it just keeps growing, growing,  growing.  I recently did a search on "kale" in the NY Times cooking database and found 294  recipes using kale. So it would appear that there might be just enough recipes to handle your kale's  bounty. Carrots & beets - you should pull them now before the really hard freezes occur. Neither carrots nor beets  handle  cold weather well. Remember to leave a little of their tops (about 1") when you store them.

• Got grow lights?  Start a crop of lettuce in your basement. Use up that leftover potting soil and the remaining seeds in the packet. And, if any of the plants that you dug up and brought indoors are leggy, you can also put them under the lights to become rejuvenated.

Hyposoter ebeninus on cabbage worm.
Source: Birdguides.com

• Leave it in the garden:  In an earlier post I suggested cutting off tomatoes and beans at the soil level to allow their roots to decompose because their roots have brought micronutrients that were deep in the soil closer to the surface.  With respect to beans and peas, the nitrogen fixing bacteria on their roots also will help to increase N levels.  Here's another  idea - leave your unharvested cabbages, broccoli, Brussel sprouts etc. in the garden over the winter.  This will allow the lava of the parasitic wasp, Hyposoter ebeninius, to over winter.  These chaps have a passion for the caterpillars of the white  butterflies that are attracted to Cruciferous veggies.  Not only do the  wasp  lava kill the caterpillars; but in response to the presence of the parasitized caterpillars, the plants actually emit an aroma that makes them less attractive to the "whites."  

And remember...

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded 

on a velvet cushion." - Henry David Thoreau