November

November is the traditional time to prepare your plot for the winter. It is generally damp, wet and frosty at night, on warmer days we can carry on rough digging leaving the clods for the frosts to break down.

GENERAL MAINTENANCE

The tidy up continues this month, my remaining defences against both fur and feather will be taken down and stored carefully until Spring. The damp and mild October resulted in both strong weed growth and late germination, so the battle continues this month, I'm not too concerned about small annual weeds as they will be turned in, but the perennials are a different matter, they need to come out and be destroyed.

MANURE & COMPOST

The last of my stored manure will be spread out early in the month, as usual I plan to let it weather for a few weeks before digging in later. I still have a good quantity of compost from 2007, the plan is to top dress the strawberry and raspberry beds once they have had their final weed & trim.

FLOWERS

I must get round to storing my gladioli, dahlias & chrysanthemums, the gladioli will need to be lifted and dried before storing in the garage. The dahlia stems will be cut back to 4" before lifting them from their current flowering positions, they will then be buried in a corner of the plot to over-winter. My chrysanths will be dealt with in the same manner as the dahlias, they will just have to take their chances in the plot corner as I've never had any great success trying to keep them ticking over at home.

SEED ORDERS

The only upside of late Autumn & Winter as far as I can tell is going through the many new seed catalogues that have arrived, then deciding on which varieties to grow during the coming year. As usual I'll end up spending a small fortune and trying to grow far too much for our needs.

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