November Garden Tips

The Gardens Project Monthly Newsletter November/December

What to do in Your Garden this month:

Welcome to fall in the garden! This past weekend I got together with some of my wonderful neighbors. We cleared out the rest of our green tomatoes and made delicious canned green tomato pickles and relish for our winter pantries.

With the change in temperature and weather, most activities this time of year center around clean-up and composting of fallen fruit, mulching any leftover perennials, making compost, sheet mulching, preserving any of your remaining harvest and general clean up. You can also divide and transplant hearty root plants like artichokes and comfrey. Last year, the first frost south of Ukiah was on December 6th and it was a hard frost. For those who grow and either cure or press their olives, it is almost time to plan for picking.

Finally, you’ll want to prepare for frost protection of your plants. For some of the tender citrus plants you’ll want to build canopies for those trees and move your container plants into a safe zone where they won’t fall victim to frost damage. I move all of my tender container plants up onto my covered deck. Please refer to the Frost Protection for Citrus and Other Subtropicals guide from the University of California Cooperative Extension for additional information on the impact ofhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif frost damage to plants and frost damage prevention measures.


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In November you can directly sow onions and garlic. It’s also time for cover crops and fava beans.

For more Gardener's Tips, please click Inland Mendocino Planting Guide(Peter Huff and Kate Frey's Monthly Planting Calendar for Inland Mendocino, also found at the "How to - Grow Food" page on The Garden's Project Website).

When in doubt, there is a tremendous body of knowledge about gardening in California, provided by University of California Cooperative Extension. This site, geared toward the home gardener can be found at http://cagardenweb.ucdavis.edu/.

Happy Mendo Winter Gardening!