November Garden Advice
The month of delicate light
Aesthetically speaking, November is probably the richest month of the year. Even after a superlative October like our most recent one here in Massachusetts, whose flamelike beauty was pushed into the surreal by a color-intensifying drought, November's flinty duns and lingering ocres are fantastic. The restraint of its palette, browning out beneath a still-powdery sky, its tendency to cycle between crawling fog and mellowed sun, the snaps of bitter evening cold that vault into hazy mornings, the weather that encourages coats, long-simmering stews, and pinot noir, make for a heady mixture. It’s the month of delicate light, the time when the true end of the growing season signals the beginning of something quieter, but equally vital to both garden and gardener: the long sleep of fallowness.
Bare locust trees rake the sky with their branches, the landscape hunches under winds and the first lacerations of snow and, in the quiet, the cardinals, robins, and jays reassert their dominance. Walking along my favorite paths through the woods or around the campus of the school, I can see through the ribs of creation, catching glimpses of life amidst decay. Rotting under necessary rain, the leaves stink at first, then turn to soil, breathing a soft perfume. The conifers, upstaged by bright vetch during the summer then by the red hemmorages of fall, return to the foreground, shaking their sprays of hunter green. The brown ghosts of deer haunt the woodline at dawn, and great horned owls rattle the sticks at night.
Waking up and throwing on a thick shawl-collared sweater, I walk into the dark with my hands stinging and my coffee breathing white, out to the stone bird feeder that stands in our now-bare and scrubby border like an obelisk. With one knuckle, I shatter last night’s sheet of ice. The fragments of it bob and chuckle. Fishing one out, I toss it to the ground, leaving a little room for the cardinals to get in and drink. It lays there, like a shard of clear pottery in the grass, reflecting Orion, while I walk back inside and heat up the frying pan for breakfast, feeling shivery and alive.
Whether or not you enjoy this month as much as I do, here are a few gardening tasks that might be worth your time:
1/ Cut Down the Summer Stalwarts
Unless you live very far south indeed, summer stalwarts like tomatoes, peppers, and squash are now well and truly frostbitten. There’s something pleasantly morbid about the pinched eyes of frozen tomatoes dangling from rotting vines, but the time has come to clean them up and compost them—a welcome addition of green, carbon-rich material for the compost heap, which tends to be dominated by nitrogen-rich browns this time of year. Your temptation might be to yank them up by the roots, but the better practice is to cut them off near the ground and leave the root systems to rot in the earth, aerating and fertilizing your soul over the winter. Come springtime, you can remove whatever’s left, knowing that these plants have done their final duty, paving the way for new crops.
2/ Tighten Up Your Composting System
Speaking of compost, now is a good time to take a look at your existing compost system to see if any improvements can be made. Whether yours is made of chicken wire, old pallets, or even plastic, the nature of the process means that all compost bins will experience rot and failures over time. Also, if you’ve gotten into a rhythm with composting your kitchen and garden waste, chances are you’ll find yourself wanting more room before too long. While the weather is pleasantly crisp but still tolerable, it is a good moment in the year to scoop everything out, dismantle the old structure, and reinforce or rebuild it. Doing so will help you address any rabbit burrows that might have cropped up underneath the pile (the composting process creates tempting warmth for burrowing creatures), clean the whole space, and renew your relationship with this vital process.
3/ Consider Winter Plantings
In my experience, once the garden has been winterized, you’ll enjoy about a week of cozy laziness before you start craving the garden again. Of course, there are many tasks that can—and should—be occupying your time over the winter, ranging from those as small as mulching your roses to as large as installing new hardscaping. But, inevitably, days will come when the sleet is rattling down, the wind is as bitter as a disinherited relative, and you really can’t go outdoors. But as long as the visibility is still good, I find that these are the best days to linger by the window and consider any changes you want to make to the garden next year. The space lies as clean as an empty canvas, and it’s easy to fill in the borders with the imagination. But it can also be useful to leave some of the flowers and grasses standing for a bit to see how they fare under the wind and weather. You may find that your Karl Forester grass looks excellent clasped with frost, that the globe thistles are even better skullcapped with snow, and that finches visit at sunset to wrench out the seeds of the echinaceas. With time and experimentation, you may find you can plant a garden that provides dynamic visual interest—not to mention shelter for birds and other animals—all winter long. That you can become a gardener for all seasons.
