November Gardening Tips
Garden Maintenance
- Prune and clean up for fire prevention.
- Oil and sharpen tools. Sand handles. Either varnish or spray paint handles to make them easy to find in the garden.
- Pull summer annuals and vegetables.
- Prune dead and broken branches on trees and shrubs.
- Rake and compost leaves and plant materials. Dispose of diseased materials.
- Water plants that rains cannot reach.
- Remove the bands of corrugated cardboard used to trap codling moth larvae from around apple tree trunks and dispose of them.
- Apply mulch.
- Remove “mummies” from fruit trees.
Fertilize
- Feed the cool-season flowers and vegetables planted last month.
- Fertilize and irrigate peach trees just after harvest.
Spray: Check the California Backyard Orchard website for current information.
- Spray stone fruit trees for leaf curl, shot hole fungus and pseudomonas canker before first heavy rain; use fixed copper.
What to Plant in November
Trees, shrubs, perennials
- November is the best month to plant trees and shrubs.
- Root evergreen cuttings: boxwood, holly, juniper, yew.
Flowers
- Direct seed wildflowers.
- Plant the bulbs you have chilling in the refrigerator: tulips, narcissus, daffodil, and hyacinths. Set some in pots for winter forcing.
- Plant corms: crocus, gladiolus, tuberous begonias.
- Plant tubers: dahlias, begonias, caladiums, and anemones.
- Plant even more spring-blooming flowers such as sweet peas, clarkia, calendula, and California poppy.
- Last chance to set out cool-weather annuals.
- Below 2000’: garlic cloves, Jerusalem artichoke. Seeds for mustard, onion, parsley, radish, Savoy spinach, cover crops.
Vegetables
- Plant onions, garlic, artichokes and asparagus before frost.
- Direct seed bok choy, spinach, peas, mustard, and radishes.
- Plant bare-root artichokes now through March.
- At warmer elevations, plant potatoes now through March.
Lawns
- Think about reducing the size of, or removing, your lawn to conserve resources.
Cover Crops
- Seed for erosion control on slopes.
- Plant clover or fava beans to improve soil structure in your vegetable garden.