November Tasks

 

1. Perimeter Patrol.  Check along the perimeter of your homestead and clear away any weeds and unwanted vegetation growing there.  You're looking along your fence lines, along the foundation of your house, and along the sidewalks, curb and gutter, and driveway aprons.  This is the place where weeds get a hold and are hard to eradicate in the normal course of mowing.  Unnoticed, they send down deep taproots.  Innocuous weeds become woody stems and if left neglected turn into annoying trees and shrubs.  Vines proliferate and crawl all over your fences.  The bottom line is to remove all of these unwanted visitors before they become permanent.

2.  Nurture your garden.   In your vegetable garden, check all your plants and note their condition.  Make sure they have adequate moisture, ventilation, and nutrients.  See if they are growing, or at least holding their own.  Then, replenish whatever is lacking.

By Thanksgiving, your garden should be in its winter state.  Overwintered crops should be under frost protection:  ag fabric or plastic or both.  Fallow beds should be covered with a leaf mulch.  Potted plants, shrubs should be brought into the shed or garage.

3.  Conduct a post-season assessment of what went well this past growing season.  For me, I do better in identifying a few strong producers and going all in on them, rather than proliferating many different, sometimes random varieties.  Think in terms of process trains, rather than a single step.  Consider sowing, transplanting, growing, disease, harvesting, cooking, preserving.  Try to move your crop to a place where you have an answer for optimizing every step in that process train.

For example, Radishes are a prolific crop.  When do you plant them, what varieties, how long until harvest, what dangers are present if you neglect them, how do you use them fresh, how do you preserve them?

4. Start the indoor garden.  It is now time to set up the indoor hydroponic gardens and begin sowing seeds.  You are looking at a long 5 months ahead of you (Nov - March) when outdoor gardening will be subdued at best.  Bring that excitement and color inside for the winter. Consult this Guide to indoor hydroponics to get started on the hydroponic timeline.

5. Greenhouse growing.  Transfer some of your work to the greenhouse and work on winter production of leafy vegetables.

6. Potted plants.  Move your vulnerable potted plants into your garden shed or garage to overwinter without the risk of hard or prolonged freezes.