November in the garden

Feeding Seedlings for Strong Spring Growth

This is the month where everything depends on how you tend the young vegetables you already have growing. Seedlings are like babies: to thrive, they need a great deal of love and attention. Carrots and parsnips, sown into ground that has not been manured in the previous year, will need fortnightly top-ups of liquid manure to help them put on weight. Brasicca seedlings of cauli, cabbage and broccoli should also be on a ‘demand feeding’ programme. If the weather is ideal, feed them every 10–14 days with liquid manure, and they will heart up in no time. If the weather is particularly wet, as it can be in November, feed them even more often to mitigate the inevitable leaching that occurs. With tender vegetables such as spinach and celery, it’s important that they never receive a check to their growth. Feed them every 10–14 days with liquid manure, water them well in dry spells, and protect them from the cold if summer is late arriving.

Greenhouse Crops and Transplanting Warm-Season Veggies

In the greenhouse (and outside, if you live in warmer climes) it’s also a case of feed, feed, feed. Tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum and chilli will enjoy a dose of potassium-rich liquid manure, so get that seaweed soaking. If you are in the south and the weather outside is still inclement, don’t rush to transplant your pumpkin and zucchini seedlings. Instead, keep them tucked up snug and warm in the greenhouse and feed them well until such time as they can safely go outside into the garden. You will achieve nothing by hurrying up the transplanting process.

Mulching and Pest Control in Early Summer

With the warmer weather, slugs and snails thrive as well as young plants so keep the bait topped up along the rows. Warmer weather can also dry out the ground so keep your chosen mulch tucked up snug against rows of young plants and replace it as required.

Supporting Peas and Broad Beans

November is the month when I’m out with the axe, bashing supports into the ground for the likes of broad beans and peas. Don’t assume that peas will ‘understand’ that they should climb up whatever support you give them. Far from doing that, they often make a bid to creep along the ground first. Peas often need a little coaxing onto the support, especially if it doesn’t reach right to ground level. I often find myself pushing a few twigs into the ground so the peas have something to cling onto as they stretch up toward the wire netting. Broad beans, especially in warm, wet conditions when their growth is tender, have a habit of breaking over whatever support you give them at the first hint of wind. For that reason, I prefer to support them with long lengths of narrow wood attached to a pole at each end of the garden bed. When the winds do arrive, the plants are less likely to simply snap over a stretched length of twine.

Staying on Top of Weeds

As young plants romp ahead in what is the first month of summer, so too will weeds be gaining momentum. Ignore them at your peril. Weeds are just as hungry for nutriment as your vegetable plants, and they often grow faster which leads to crowding, shading and a battle for root space. Time spent removing them from the garden will be rewarded with faster growing, lusher vegetables (and if you mulch immediately after, you are unlikely to have to weed again for the rest of the season).

Planting Potatoes, Leeks and Swedes

November is also the time for sowing a new crop of potatoes (this time, I choose a main crop such as agria or desiree). I also transplant into the garden another row of leeks. Guided by the farming fraternity, I pop a few swede seed into the ground as soon as I see my agricultural neighbours ploughing up their fields in preparation for sowing their fodder crop for next winter. Although swedes are a southern staple, I also recommend this vegetable to my northern counterparts. There is nothing like swede mashed into carrot or parsnip with a knob of butter and, judging by the cost and the diminutive size of swedes spotted in Auckland supermarkets over winter, you would be well advised to grow your own.

Protecting Blossoms and Berries from Birds and Possums

On the fruit front, I’m protecting the blossom of espaliered and dwarf fruit trees and berries from the kereru and possums with a covering of strawberry netting. It’s easy to damage the very growth you are trying to protect if you don’t do this in the right way. Here’s my suggestion, which we follow in our garden with excellent results: Hammer into the ground, around the plants to be protected, poles little wider than a broom handle. Bend cut pieces of polythene pipe to fit into the ends of the poles, creating arches. Stretch your netting over this framework, and anchor it to the ground with bricks or small hoops of number 8 wire.

Succession Sowing for Summer Abundance

Once you’ve attended to the maintenance of your young plants, you can sit back and watch them grow. Your only major task, now, is to keep up the succession sowing so that you are never without seedlings in the wings.