November Garden Checklist: Tasks & DIY Projects

November in the four-season garden is quieter, perfect for catching up on tasks, crafting from the garden, and preparing for the next season.

If you like a written plan, grab the Essential Fall Garden Checklist here.

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November Garden Tasks

Here in southwestern Ontario, Canada, November is hard to predict. Temperatures are coolers, but the days may still be balmy. There will be night frosts, but who knows if it will snow? You never know!

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Grow

Planting, Sowing, & Preparations

Outdoors

For some, November marks the end of the growing seasoning when we take advantage of the weather for winter sports or indoor hobbies. Or both.

Even if you don’t like the cold, there are plenty of quick wins offered by the winter garden including direct seed sowing and winter vegetable growing.

At minimum, take care of the birds if permitted. They add much cheer to dark winter days.

• Finish up October tasks including mulching, weeding, garden bed prep, composting, cleaning garden tools, turning off outdoor water faucets, draining garden hose.
• Check on potted plants overwintering in storage. Keep watered and mouse-proof.
• Get ready to for winter sowing in milk jugs or other containers.
• Maintain winter vegetable garden. Keep the soil watered and remove covers on warm days.
• Make note of trees that will need late winter pruning.
• Harvest and sow milkweed seeds.
• Keep turning the compost pile 2x week until it freezes up, then switch to winter composter.
• Make leaf mold to improve your soil structure.

Patio

• Enclose covered patio with vinyl sheeting. This stuff works very nicely!

Pond

• Maintain pond pump. Prepare pond for winter.

Trees

• Warmer zones may still be able to plant trees if you don’t get hard frosts yet.
• Once leaves have dropped and you can see what’s what, it’s a good time to remove any dead, damaged, or diseased branches.

Wildlife

• Freezing temperatures? Add homemade suet to bird feeders and provide fresh, running water with a heated birdbath.
• Set up winter bird feeding stations. Clean, repair, store breakable feeders.
• Keep bird feeders and water feeders clean and filled.
• Create seed pod bouquets for wild birds
• Leave leaves and stems and other plant debris in place—it’s winter habitat for all sorts of animals.

Indoors

• Force (grow) indoor flowering bulbs including paperwhites, amaryllis, and more.
• Here’s a guide to year-round Thanksgiving and Christmas cactus care and reblooming.
• And, don’t forget you can keep poinsettia all year-round too.

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Make

Creative Fall Projects

• Make gifts using pressed flowers.
• Make homemade beeswax candles, lotion, balms, and crafts.
• Try wood burning art. It’s very enjoyable.
• Cool weather means soup time! Here’s a delicious vegetarian split pea soup.

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Ideas

• Order seeds.
• Order bare-roots plants including asparagus and cane fruits (they are shipped at planting time).
• Order seeds for indoor sowing. Get seed starting mix and organic container mix while shops have it in stock.

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Observe & Enjoy

You may not know it by the name phenology, but you certainly know what it is. Phenology is the science of observing annual first events in nature.  When flower buds open. When peepers first peep. When bees appear. When migrations arrive. When bulbs pop up. The list is endless.

Seasonal changes prompt natural responses in the plant and animal kingdoms. It is interesting (and important, in this era of climate change) to note these events and compare year over year.

Late Autumn Phenological Events

These are some examples.

• Leaf drop. Deciduous trees may now be bare.
• Birds eat seeds from old plants, as insect food sources are sparser.
• Migrating birds stop by on their way south.
• Pond fish become dormant when temperature drops.
• Insects are tucked away in their winter hiding spots.
• Squirrels and chipmunks elbow their way to the bird feeder. They probably looking plumper now.
• Frosty nights and snow flurries.

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Resources

This outlines all the essential tasks to safely put your garden to bed for the winter.

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛