Jobs to do in November

Jobs to do this month

It’s November. The clocks have gone back, the afternoons are really short, and frosts are on their way.

Start manuring beds once they’ve been cleared.

If you don’t have much storage space at home, rather than lift crops such as carrots, parsnips, celeriac, celery and beetroot, you could try leaving them in the ground and protecting them from frost with a thick mulch of dry straw.

This list isn’t exhaustive. You can get detailed advice from many organisations, especially those listed on this website under Help and Advice

Fruit

  • Prune blackcurrants.
  • Take hardwood cuttings of redcurrants and whitecurrants.
  • Plant rhubarb crowns.
  • Pick and store late apples and pears.
  • Plant bare-root fruit trees and bushes.
  • Tidy up strawberry plants.
  • Prune grape vines after leaf fall, but before the end of December to avoid ‘bleeding’ of sap.
  • Prune established apple and pear trees between now and early March.
  • Cut back summer-fruiting raspberries if not already done.

Vegetables and salads

  • Lime next year’s brassica bed to help avoid clubroot.
  • Start harvesting parsnips.
  • There’s still time to sow hardy peas and broad beans, but they may need protecting with cloches in prolonged frost or snow (if we ever get any!).
  • Force chicory.
  • Start harvesting Brussels sprouts.
  • Move tender herbs under cover.
  • Pick cauliflower.
  • Pick and store the last of the chillies from the greenhouse.
  • Clear French beans, marrows, courgettes and broad beans and put them on the compost heap.
  • Check stored main crop potatoes occasionally (once a month, say), discarding any that are rotten or soft; fungus can spread quickly otherwise.