November 2021 Edible Garden Planner

Late November edible garden

Monday, November 1, 2021

November is a beautiful time of year as Mother Nature is getting prepared for the cold, wintry days ahead.  Late fall chores should include cleaning up your garden beds, reflecting on the gardening season completed, and preparing for the first freeze.

Garden bed clean up

To prepare your garden for its winter nap, remove gardening debris from your beds.  For any diseased vegetation, be sure to throw these away and not compost.  You don't want to propagate and spread any diseases to other parts of the garden.  A really hot compost pile will kill them but it isn't worth the risk going into winter.  I keep the seed heads on the flowers in the garden for food for the birds over the winter. 

This is a good time to decide if you would like to make your own compost.  Compost is referred to by gardeners as “black gold.”  It provides nutrients, beneficial microbes, fertilizer and overall improves your soil’s condition.  Composting is possible in small spaces or even indoors  Outdoor compost piles go slowly in the fall and winter, but speed up as temps rise in the spring.

I have used an electric composter called NatureMill that we kept in the garage by the door.  It was easy to keep an odor free bucket made just for this purpose in the kitchen to collect fruit and vegetable scraps and empty weekly into the composter.  The small indoor buckets are called compost keepers or bins and come in a variety of decorative styles.  

You need greens and browns to keep the compost odor free and "cooking".  Wood pellets, chopped up leaves, or shredded paper work well as "browns" with the "greens" of kitchen scraps.  You get finished compost in a couple of weeks with an electric composter.  An outdoor tumbler takes a few weeks in warm weather.  I emptied one side of my outdoor bin to have plenty of room over the winter for kitchen scraps.  You can store the compost you are making in a trash bag to use when preparing your spring beds and to revitalize potting soils.  Re-energize your potting soil!  It is great for flowers and vegetables.

I have been using an outdoor, tumbler type composter for the last few years.  I first had an insulated, metal one by Jora.  It ended up rusting.  I now use a plastic tumbler.  I bought a grill cover to put over it to keep the compost from getting drenched with each rain.  You could also keep under an eave.  It works year round but much better in the summer.  It is critical to keep the greens and browns in the right ratio to keep the compost cooking in the winter.   Here are some tips if your composter/compost pile starts having issues  Troubleshooting your compost pile

After your garden clean up, look to give your garden a nutritional boost for the winter months.  Doing a nice layer of compost and organic fertilizer, topped with mulch, will allow the nutrients to seep into the garden soil, ready to give your spring plants a boost.  The mulch will keep the soil more temperate during the winter months for your winter edibles and keep weed seeds from sprouting.  Organic fertilizers take a long time to release their nutrients.  Using in the fall will give the spring garden a running start.  It is best to get a soil test done to make sure you are keeping the nutrients in the right balance.  The next step in garden production and your nutrition-soil minerals

Reflection on the past garden season

While the past gardening season is still fresh in your mind, now is a great time to jot down some notes on what went well, what didn’t, and what you would like to research over the winter.  Make a list of the varieties that did great that you want to replant, which plants you want to be sure to have more, or less, of next year.  Also make note of how many plants make sense to plant for next year.  Here are my reflections this fall for the edible garden.   Reflecting back on the 2020 edible garden; planning for 2021

Keep track of what you eat over the winter to give you a good idea of what and how much to plant come spring.  How much to plant?  Use this winter to figure out what to grow in the spring!

Even if you have a small area, you can grow most of what you eat.  How to decide what to plant for small spaces?

Fall is a fabulous time to make new garden beds.  It is super easy, too.  Just use a hose to outline your new bed, fertilize, put down a layer of cardboard (earthworms love cardboard!), a layer of compost, and cover with mulch.  By spring, the new garden bed will be ready for planting.  Easy ways to make a new vegetable garden bed

Gardening after the first frost

For northern Kentucky, the average first frost date is mid-October.  We have not had a frost or freeze yet, but they are calling for our first frost this week.  It is below normal highs for this time of year.  When the lows start getting 28 degrees F or below, this is a killing frost for the summer veggies.  Be sure to harvest the remaining tomatoes, peppers, and squash before the first hard freeze.

Green tomatoes and peppers can be brought indoors to ripen.  Green peppers are great as they are.  You can let tomatoes turn red or eat as green tomatoes.  I remember my grandmother making fried green tomatoes every fall.  A late fall tradition-fried green tomatoes!  Many make them into relish, too.

There are many edible crops that can still be planted in November.  You really can eat fresh out of the garden year round even if you live in Zone 3.  Greens, herbs, onions, broccoli, fruit bushes and trees and perennial flowers are a few of the crops that can be planted this month.  For more on planting in November,  What to plant in the November edible garden  

You can cover your veggies with a portable green house or row cover to extend the season for many cool season crops.  For cold climates, using cover is the key.  Frost forecasted? Here’s your to-do list  With a portable green house, we have kept lettuce, kale, mustard greens, sorrel, and celery all the way through winter.  You can garden year round in small space

I still need to transplant my September lettuce starts into the portable greenhouse pots.  Having cover will help them grow and protect them through the winter.  It is late to start seed but will give a boost for spring harvests.  I will move my pots of greens under the portable greenhouse.  I'll use gallon jugs of water inside the portable greenhouse to keep the temperature more moderate.

If you are using pots, putting the pots on the south side, in a sunny local and close to the house will keep them from getting frost bit into November or even December for cold season crops.  It seems to extend the season for 2-4 weeks.  Prepare for hard freeze

You can also cut a piece off your herbs, put them in a pot, and bring indoors on a sunny window to have fresh herbs readily available.  Basil is an easy one to restart indoors.  Chives, thyme, rosemary, savory, tarragon, salad burnet, and oregano can also be harvested into December from the outdoor garden.  Growing herbs indoors for winter

Surprisingly, we found that peppers and some eggplants are great candidates from bringing in for the winter.  Our Jalapenos and Cayennes continued to fruit for weeks indoors and when put back out in the spring, we had peppers a month earlier than when using new plants.  Tomatoes are also contenders for overwintering indoors.  All are tender perennials and need direct sun to do well indoors.  I bring in only the ones that did really well that I want to get a head start on next season and not all do well.  To give them the best chance, make sure they get full sun.

Be sure to use insecticidal soap on any plants you intend to bring indoors a couple weeks prior so you don’t bring in unintended guests.  Just remember that insecticides kill the good bugs like bees as well as the bad bugs so be careful when you spray.  Natural, organic pest strategies and how to make your own bug sprays

I keep my plants out as long as possible to minimize their stay indoors.  There is nothing like sunshine and fresh air for a plant.  For the last 3 winters, I overwintered all my tropicals and edibles in the unheated garage with a hanging fluorescent light fixture with daylight bulbs.  They all did well except for the eggplants.  Eggplants are spotty, but worth the try if you had a great one.  Be sure to save seed so you can keep the plants going that do well in your garden and are disease free. Seed saving-fun, easy and a cost saver    You can save seeds even from heirlooms you buy in the store to try in your garden.  I have a few that have become standbys in our garden that came from the grocery store and farmers market.

Late November potted lettuce

For the herbs you cut back earlier in the season to dry, November is a great time to now strip the stems of the harvested leaves, dry and put into jars for winter cooking.  You can make your own “Herbes De Provence”.  Thyme, oregano, rosemary, savory, basil, tarragon and lavender are common herbs used in this famous French seasoning.  I mix them up in about equal amounts and store in a sealed Mason jar.  It is great to add to just about anything-sauces, chicken, fish, potatoes, garlic bread.  Makes wonderful Christmas presents, too.  Make your own "Herbes de Provence".

For those that keep on going into the winter, I would prune back the plants by about two thirds and strip the leaves from the cut stems.  Do so when there are warm temps forecasted for a few days to allow the plants cut ends to heal.  Otherwise a cold snap can kill the plant.

Use your herbs for your Thanksgiving meal Use your own herbs for your Thanksgiving dinner  More than likely you will have some edibles still growing in the garden.  Take a look and plan your meal around them.  Some winter hardy edibles include kale, broccoli, cabbage, chives, sage, thyme, corn salad, sorrel, cultivated dandelions, plantain greens, celery, mustards, even some hardy lettuces.