What's happening in the late November edible garden

Lavender in late fall

Sunday, November 23, 2025

We have had a couple of hard freezes in the first week of November.  Since then we have had chilly days and days in the 70's.  Another hard freeze is forecasted for this week and highs in the 40's.  Harvests in the garden are greens, herbs, and onions.  The summer crops are done until next year.

I stripped all the fruits off the plants before our hard freeze at the beginning of the month and put the greenhouse covers over my cool season loving greens.  Usually with a cover, the greens produce all the way through to spring.  We've put the greens on the basement patio which is on the northeast side.  I re-opened the covers when it got so warm.  After the 60's in the next couple of days, I'll put the covers back on to encourage growth.

We took all the tropicals at the beginning of the month except for the lantana and jasmine tree.  They'll be coming in later this week.  I use a grow light over them so they get enough light to survive the winter.  I do have a couple of tomatoes and peppers I'll bring into the sunroom to overwinter.  We put triple pane windows in our house to make it more energy efficient; it also keeps more daylight from entering.  I may have to add daylight bulbs in the sunroom too.

The onions, oregano, thyme and mint will stay green without cover over the winter.

Inside, I cleared out most the frozen tomatoes from last year and made tomato sauce.  Had 9 quarts of frozen tomatoes that I used another 6 pints of frozen sweet peppers along with 6 bay leaves and 8 garlic cloves to make into 12 pints of sauce.  Our tomato harvest was much smaller this year because of the prolonged heat waves we had in the upper 90's.  And since we had so many tomatoes last year, I did not plant a late crop to pick up production like I usually do.  Next year, I will because we will need fresh tomatoes to freeze.  I'll also look for more high heat tolerant varieties to try next summer as it looks like these type of heat waves are here to stay.

We picked up our deer from the processor yesterday.  I always make sauce before we have to load the freezer back up with venison.  Plus, I go through everything we have in the freezer to know what we need to have the deer processed into and how much veggies are left to determine what I need to plant in next year's garden.

I have already done my garden review of this season and an initial cut on what to grow next season.  I started getting seed catalogs this week.  I'll look through them to tweak the plan and order seeds.  I'll start seeds indoors in late February or March. 

Reflections on the 2025 garden and the 2026 garden plan

The only lingering garden chore is to plant garlic and shallots.  I think I'll order a dwarf mulberry tree.  They start producing a ton of fruit in 2-3 years.  I'll also look for other annual fruits to try next year to fill the gap.

If using a greenhouse this winter, remember the biggest killer of veggies in greenhouses?  Getting too hot!  Make sure you crack open your green house when the temps get above freezing and the sun is shining.