November in the Garden
Greetings from Birch Meadow,
Breathtaking November days are finally upon us! What a joy to tend the earth under brilliant blue skies with cooler temperatures. We are all enjoying the crisp, fresh air and the rich colors that our tree canopies provide.
It’s time to put our hoses away and order firewood and candles for the cool, dark evenings. Time to celebrate the harvest time with family and friends and stretch into a slower pace.
Enjoy the subtleties of this rich season!
We are so grateful for you.
THINGS TO DO IN YOUR GARDEN IN NOVEMBER
• Here is a link for things that should have been done in October, just in case you are still catching up!
• Click here for Central NC Planting Calendar for Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs.
• Do NOT fertilize shrubs in August, September, October, or November.
• It’s time to plant and transplant trees and shrubs.
• As the weather cools and you have ashes from indoor and outdoor fires, fertilize your vegetable garden, bulb beds, and non-acid loving plants if soil pH is below 6.0 with wood ashes. You can get a pH reader on Amazon for $10. It should have a list of non-acid loving plants. (Never spread ash without first checking your soil pH. It is far easier to change acidic soil than it is to change soil that is too alkaline.)
• Plant one-year-old asparagus crowns in the vegetable garden this month and trim existing asparagus foliage to the ground after foliage is killed by frost.
• Finish planting spring-flowering bulbs.
• Cut back and clean up frost-killed perennials, unless you would like to leave seed heads for the birds.
• Prune out older canes on blackberries and raspberries.
• Order fruit trees and grape vines this month for a February or March delivery and planting.
• Remember to water your evergreen trees and shrubs thoroughly before winter sets in, particularly if weather conditions have been dry.
• Fill your compost bin with unwanted fallen leaves.
HOW TO DO A MORE CONSCIOUS FALL CLEANUP
Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of all those dead leaves. Autumn is the best time to learn from your garden — if you slow down and pay attention.
By Margaret Roach, New York Times
Plants are flopping, and leaves are dropping; the garden is letting go. But while we may have the urge to check “garden cleanup” off the to-do list with one heroic push, it’s not like “mop kitchen floor.”
There’s a valuable education, and a lot of life, tucked between and beneath all those fading bits.
As Peter Bevacqua, a garden designer in Claverack, N.Y., has learned, a conscious cleanup can yield site-specific, garden-improving ideas — and also seasonal snippets you can bring indoors, to savor a little longer.
Get out your notebook: It’s prime study time.
Mr. Bevacqua has been watching, and occasionally assisting, as things unfold in the two and a half acres of formal gardens and wilder plantings that he shares with his husband, Stephen King. In 1988, the two former advertising creative directors bought the 1920s colonial-style house on a flat piece of land outside Hudson, N.Y., as a weekend place. For about five years now, it has been their full-time home.
For Mr. Bevacqua, whose father taught him to garden when he was a child, being upstate has meant liberation from the frustrating constraints of a few window boxes outside the couple’s former Upper West Side apartment.
Tentatively at first, they set about making a formal landscape — Mr. King making his mark with hardscape projects and crisp edging, Mr. Bevacqua with plants and more plants.
They laid a winding brick path to a greenhouse the previous owner built not far from the main house, and planted a long border there. “Or at least it seemed long to us in those days,” Mr. Bevacqua said of that first project.
Tentative turned to adventurous, and long came to mean longer, after Mr. Bevacqua did a two-week, hands-on training at one of England’s best-known gardens, Great Dixter, in East Sussex. He has returned five times, calling himself a proper “Great Dixter groupie” in his Instagram bio.
That connection shows. At the heart of the couple’s place is the sun garden, a rectangular room defined by yew hedging that gets shorn in early July. Within it are gravel pathways and effusive flower beds.
Inside the hedges and beyond, theirs is a world studded with boxwood globes and topiary, from oversized muffins to giant green wedding cakes. It has been a popular Garden Conservancy Open Days destination for 15 years and is one of 20 gardens profiled in the new book “American Roots: Lessons and Inspiration from the Designers Reimagining Our Home Gardens,” by Nick McCullough, Allison McCullough and Teresa Woodard.
FALL’S WELL AND TRULY HERE – IT’S A GOOD TIME TO CHECK IN WITH YOUR HOUSEPLANTS
By Melissa Kirsch, New York Times
Last spring I came clean about my gardening ineptitude, my thwarted ambitions to cultivate an indoor jungle. Readers of The Morning answered my S.O.S. with wisdom (“Ignore them”), admonishments (“Water the plants according to their needs, not your schedule”), philosophy (“Plants are intelligent and also have a strong sense of inter-being”) and detailed prescriptions for horticultural success (“First, have no kids,” one committed plant parent advised).
Now, five months later, the living room is lush, populated with hardier specimens that can stand the southern exposure. A moisture meter has taken the guesswork out of watering. But it’s fall, and the light is changing. As Margaret Roach wrote above, “Plants are flopping, and leaves are dropping; the garden is letting go.”
“Again with this?” I groaned to the dracaenae. (“Talk to them!” numerous readers advised.) The plants chuckled and shook their heads. No they didn’t. They’re plants! They sat there in their perfectly calibrated soil. They abided. “The sun won’t set any later than 6:00pm in NC again until March 12th, 2023,” the Metro Weather Twitter account reminded me this week. I reminded the plants. They took it better than I did.
The evidence is the same every year: earlier sunsets, cooler mornings, the smell of wood smoke. Winter’s coming. This fall-into-winter is the third since the pandemic began. What will this season bring?
This weekend, I’m off to see the foliage, whatever leaves are still there for the peeping. I’m taking the counsel of my colleague Erik Vance, who wrote about seasonal melancholy recently: “Somewhere in the crunching leaves, crackling fires and chilly air, you might locate a feeling of possibility, even electricity.”
I’ll return to my makeshift hothouse, optimistic that my improved gardening hygiene will keep the plants thriving-ish through the darker months. There are bright spots if you look for them. On Sunday, for instance, a late-blooming perennial: “The White Lotus” returns for a second season.
Before you go: We turn the clocks back next weekend!
CLICK HERE FOR HOUSEPLANTS TO GET YOU THROUGH THE WINTER
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If you would like help tending your established garden or installing a new one, please let us know! Click here for Maintenance Policy & Pricing.
Enjoy the wonders of November!
The Birch Meadow Team
Mary Beth, Kelley, Barbara, Karla, Jared, Lauren, Jess, Rachael, Kell, Leigh, Shannon, and Community Based Landscaping
919-224-9697