november garden chores
NATIONAL LEAF MONTH: That’s what I’d declare it if I were in charge of such things. November is nonstop leaves here, and a good rake is my constant companion. But how much leaf cleanup to do, and how much to let lie in the name of the greater environmental good?
Whatever tool you choose and however hard you work, thanks to that prankster the wind there is no perfection possible, though, and maybe that’s a good thing, because leaves left to lie where they fall can be a home to unseen beneficial creatures (more on that below).
In go the last bulbs this month (including garlic, if it hasn’t yet); into the cellar go the last tender things before serious cold threatens. I’m still weeding (true; until the ground freezes and I can no more), mowing one last time, perhaps—and also saving some seeds for use next year.
If I didn’t have a big fence, I’d be upping my deer-control measures right now, too, like this. The full to-do list for the month:
garden elsewhere? regional links
THE ORGANIC-GARDENING approach and the how-to tips I offer apply most anywhere–pruning a rose or sowing a tomato seed is similar, wherever the rose or tomato may grow. But the when is not the same. To adjust timing: My garden is in Zone 6A, in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA) area, where frost can persist well into May and return in October. You may need next month’s chores, or last month’s (the archive is here). For more Zone-specific advice, I’ve rounded up links to calendars and checklists from around the nation (and the U.K.). But read on first, because I’m betting there’s something here for you, wherever you may dig, weed, or prune.
managing leaves and other ‘debris’
ALOT HAS CHANGED about fall cleanup, especially about how we tackle fallen leaves (or don’t!). The “leave the leaves” campaign of recent years has alerted us to the habitat value of what we long referred to as “leaf litter,” and now a recently published research study calculates just what the impacts of leaf removal are to which organisms, and also offers insights into how and where in our landscapes we can leave the leaves to create habitat with the most positive impact. It’s co-authored by Max Ferlauto, the Maryland state entomologist, and he explained the impacts, and some suggested tactics, in this fall 2025 interview.
To up the habitat value of my landscape, I let leaves lie where they fall wherever I can, simulating what would be happening on the forest floor. The ones I can’t let lie, I try to move whole to spots where they can remain. I’m creating more “leave the leaves” zones at the edges of my yard, especially under native trees. The ecology of leaf litter is surprising; a lot of species of Lepidopterans leave their larvae and eggs on tree leaves of their host species in the fall months, for instance, so that come spring the emergent insects will still be near their host tree (that research study cited above gives stark numbers).
Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware taught me more detail on that in fall 2020–about how to handle leaves during cleanup, and why. We revisited the subject when we talked specifically about the power of oaks in a more recent chat. Uli Lorimer of Native Plant Trust walked me through his approach in fall 2022. And native bee expert Heather Holm explained how and when to cut back garden plants that offer nesting and overwintering places for those critical insects. Don’t miss those four episodes of the podcast, with Doug and Uli and with Heather, and the latest one with Max Ferlauto, or read their transcripts.
Though I lamented the apparent extinction of really high-quality bamboo leaf rakes, and at first resisted a new-fangled metal version, it turns out it’s really good; here’s that story (and that rake). Other gardeners swear by their leaf blowers, and sometimes it looks (but doesn’t sound) tempting. If you use one, make it a battery-powered version to limit pollution (both from fuels and noise).
BE A COMPOSTING PRO: Pile up materials as you cut back faded plants, following Lee Reich’s easy plan (video how-to included). First extract finished compost and topdress your vegetable-garden beds with it, getting a jump on spring soil prep.
GOT ANOTHER COMPOST QUESTION? I bet my compost FAQ page has the answer.
best practices for the birds
IT’S FEEDER SEASON, even for those of us who don’t feed in frost-free months (or can’t, because of marauding black bear, as is my issue). I begin again when there is frost in the ground, around month’s end, or when the snows fly. Are you ready? The feeders I use (affiliate link) shut when a heavier animal tries to latch onto them (you know who I am talking about). The seed chamber is also cleverly ventilated, so humidity or damp doesn’t result in gunked-up seed in the tube. The smaller models are small enough to be very easy to clean regularly, to prevent transmission of disease from bird to bird. More on how (and what) I feed birds. Plus: a 2020 story on bird-feeding I did for “The New York Times.”
ONE EXTRA BIRD-FEEDING THOUGHT: I do broadcast handfuls of seed in October and November in a few key spots on pavement near the house approximately where the feeders will eventually hang, to reconnect myself with juncos, titmice, chickadees, mourning doves, white-throated sparrows and others who winter here. I think we both enjoy this little preamble (and so do the squirrels–naughty!).
MORE TIPS for putting out the welcome mat for the birds include cleaning out nest boxes and these other important to-do’s, and also plan to help birds stay safe from window strikes and predation by cats (expert advice on that).
UNFROZEN, AVAILABLE WATER 365 days a year is the Number 1 thing you can do in support of birds and other wildlife. I keep a hole in the surface of each of my water gardens, so overwintering frogs and salamanders and fish don’t suffocate, and so birds and animals can have a drink (or a splash). Water-garden wintertime prep.
seeds you can still save
YES, IT’S BEST TO PLAN what seeds you’ll save, starting at planting time in spring. But even this late, some garden harvest—including the last beans, or winter squash—may hold hidden treasure. Re-read Ken Greene of Hudson Valley Seed Library’s basic how-to on seed saving, to learn which ones are easy, and whether your various squash will have crossed or not, for instance. Or read about the Organic Seed Alliance’s tactics (including a link to a free, 30-page book-like pdf download loaded with both the botanical science and sensible tips, too).
SEEDS OF NATIVE MEADOW PLANTS are best winter-sown outdoors in a special but simple animal-proof setup. Heather McCargo of wild Seed Project in Maine showed me how.
safekeeping for tender things
OBVIOUSLY, NON-HARDY THINGS must be stashed safely, and up North, the process of moving them into shelter began in September and October. I got advice for stashing tropicals from Dennis Schrader, a wholesale nurseryman who specializes in them, and from designer and nursery owner Kathy Tracey. (Also in the archives: overwintering rosemary, and storing figs, and a general page of plant-stashing tips.)
STORING THE VEGETABLE HARVEST in the correct spots—no, a winter squash and an onion won’t be happy in the same temperature and humidity!–means longer-lasting enjoyment. Here’s how, in a chart and story.
are bulbs all planted?
MANY FLOWER BULBS can go in the ground surprisingly late, even up North, but what they can’t do is sit forgotten in your garage all winter. Get those bulbs in (and even purchase more on closeout sales, if you have time for extra digging). My bulb FAQ page. (Garlic, another bulb, is covered under the vegetable subheading below.)
an ounce of prevention
CLEAN UP with a focus on prevention–of pests, weeds, and general chaos in the coming year. First hit things that showed signs of disease, weed or insect infestation, in case weather curtails your cleanup before you get to everything. More tips:
- Weed war: Minimize weed woes for next year by committing to an all-season approach to weed control, including now. Some weeds are actually easier to thwart in late summer and fall, and I’m still pulling what I see and deadheading seed-laden ones, at least. All my weed-control posts.
- Pest control: Deer, voles, cabbage worms, squash bugs, cucumber beetles and other garden pests can be limited with tactics like this. (If you had viburnum leaf beetle, start your rounds of egg-case elimination now. The details.)
- Clear turf or weeds from around the trunks of fruit trees and ornamentals to reduce winter damage by rodents and rabbits. Hardware cloth collars should be in place year-round, sunk an inch or so into the soil, and standing 18 inches high. Use half-inch mesh or smaller.
- And this: last call for soil samples for testing (how that works). If you had areas where something didn’t fare well, gather a soil sample before the ground freezes and take or send it in for analysis to your local Cooperative Extension service.
trees & shrubs
BET YOU WISH you’d added more woody plants that show off in fall. Plan to do so for next year–many can even be planted this late in autumn, if your nursery or a mail-order source still has stock. Or what about my top conifers for winter, and year-round, beauty?
FALL IS A GREAT TIME for planting woody things, though here in Zone 6A I stop planting around early November. If you are still at it where you garden: Don’t dig an extra-large hole, or amend the backfill with lots of compost or peat moss. Here’s why that’s bad for transplants—plus how to prune their roots before planting.
BE EXTRA-VIGILANT cleaning up under fruit trees, as fallen fruit and foliage allowed to overwinter invites troubles next season. So will mummies (shriveled fruit hanging on the trees). Best to pick and remove, though I confess to leaving mine hanging for the birds, who adore it.
ALWAYS BE on the lookout for dead, damaged, diseased wood in trees and shrubs and prune them out as discovered. This is especially important before winter arrives with its harsher weather, where weaknesses left in place invite tearing and unnecessary extra damage. Remove suckers and water sprouts, too, but don’t do aesthetic pruning now. A pruning roundup is here.
vegetables, fruit & herbs
IF NEXT YEAR’S GARDEN plans include a patch of strawberries or asparagus, do the soil preparation now so bare-root plants ordered over the winter can be planted extra early come spring. Mulch existing strawberry plants with a couple of inches of (guess what?) straw. Let asparagus foliage go brown on its own; don’t cut back till later, or even earliest spring.
GARLIC IN YET? Ideally it should be about a month before frost is in the ground, but it’s pretty cooperative with slightly later planting. How to plant garlic: Prepare a sunny spot, and plant each clove 2 or so inches deep and 6 inches apart in the row, with about 12 inches between rows, then mulch. Green growth may appear this fall; no worry.
PARSLEY AND CHIVES can be potted up and brought indoors for offseason use. A few garlic cloves in a pot will yield a supply of chive-like (but spicier) garlic greens all winter for garnish. I prefer to harvest my green herbs and store them in these ways for winter use. Storing a rosemary?
flower garden
PROTECT VULNERABLE ROSES in the coldest zones from winter damage in coldest zones by mounding up their crowns with a 6- to 12-inch layer of soil before the ground freezes. After all is frozen, add a layer of leaf mulch to further insulate.
CANNAS, DAHLIAS AND OTHER tender bulb-like things need careful digging for indoor storage. There are many methods, but the basics: Once frost blackens the foliage, wait a week, then cut back tops to 6 inches and dig carefully, then brush or wash off soil and let dry for two weeks or so to cure. Stash in a dry spot, like an unheated basement or crawl space, around 40-50 degrees, in boxes or pots filled with bark chips or peat moss, like this. With the cannas, I skip the medium, and just put them in garbage bags or bins that I leave open in the cellar.
DON’T DEADHEAD FADED perennials, biennials and annuals if you want self-sowns, or make sure to shake pods around before removing plant carcasses. Nicotiana, poppies, larkspur, clary sage and many others fall into this leave-alone group. So do plants with showy or bird-friendly seedheads, like grasses and coneflowers.
PREPARE NEW beds for future planting by smothering grass or weeds with layers of recycled corrugated cardboard or thick layers of newspaper, then put mulch on top.
houseplants
START A POT OF PAPERWHITES in potting soil or pebbles and water, and stagger forcing of another batch every couple of weeks for a winterlong display. Or instead force some hyacinth bulbs–super-easy says Tovah Martin, and not to be without.
CONTINUE RESTING AMARYLLIS BULBS in a dry, dark place where they will have no water at all for a couple of months total. I put mine in a little-used closet, and they will come out late this month, since they went in around mid- to late September. Pot up new ones now.
lawns
KEEP MOWING TILL THE GRASS stops growing, and make the last cut a short one. If you’re still mowing with a gas mower, put a battery-powered one on your holiday gift wishlist.
all the while: take notes, plan next year’s changes
DON’T RUSH AROUND mindlessly while you’re doing the November chores, even though it feels like time is running out. While I tease the garden apart, I’m making my next-year garden resolutions—remember this resolution list, made one fall? So helpful.
Plan in detail to extend and enrich your garden’s season. Reviewing some of my archived tip-filled interviews with landscape designers like these may help. Or maybe you want to concentrate on adding natives that particularly appeal to pollinators? That story. Or creating a garden that the birds love. Or cultivate a meadow?
Or getting more creative with your use of bulbs. Or starting a crevice garden or a gravel garden.
Or reducing maintenance and shifting more toward “management” by designing new plantings with the inspiration of plant communities in mind, like this.
Whatever your goal, begin planning now.
need help in other regions?
AGAIN: I’m in the Northeast, in Zone 6A, though the how-to in this story will work most anywhere (if timed slightly differently). For more Zone-specific advice, I’ve rounded up a new page of links to calendars and checklists from around the nation.
I find that my Amaryllis bulbs do fine without the dark resting treatment – they take a summer vacation in a semi shaded spot in the garden, and right now, I’m repotting them in new soil and putting them in an east facing window. They’ll bloom on their own schedule, usually in early spring. Ulster county, NY
Hi Margaret!
I eat all the time do you? Birds need to be fed year round not just during the winter. Especially during the nesting season.
Yes, I describe my garden as a giant year-round birdfeeder. (I only put out actual feeders for the winter months as supplement, but there are birds here all year eating like mad — seeds, then fruits, and insects galore.)
I need inspiration to redo a three tier, weed infested flower garden. It contains tree peonies, reg. peonies and iris – would love to redo with some natives.
Don’t want to miss any episode!
I am adding several Mountain Laurel’s to my gardens:
-they are coming from a friends property, sharing
-Mountain Laurel are a native plant, beneficial
-they’re beauty, both when flowering & how they grow
Still feeling confused about what to clean up and what to leave. I get it about asters, goldenrod, joe pye weed. But what about the leaves of iris and daylilies, which i always thought to cut down to give a neater appearance. Or the especially tender annuals like impatients v. marigolds or zinnias…up or down? Baptisita? platycodon? the list goes on. Any chance you could create one…stay v. cut? and people could add to it? I’m a long-time gardener of the wild/organic persuasion, but my cottage garden is getting a little blowsy by now and needs a bit of grooming before the snow sets in. thanks!!
Have a small area of mainly fescue and bermuda grass that I would like to convert to a ”bee lawn” — low growing natives — nothing too tall to block our view of pastures and pond.
A few natives live there already such as violets, yarrow, blue-eyed grass, salvias. Would like to hear recommendations for other low-growing plants for pollinators/wildlife. EX; would pussy toes grow in our area?
We’re in Zone 7B.
Thanks.
….if you still have a gas mower.
Thank You for all the great information – fall cleanup and prep can be overwhelming. But I’m still confused about when to prune back our pussy willow. We’ve heard different opinions – 1) prune in March, to only a few inches or 2) prune in the autumn. Ours was planted four years ago, and is now about seven feet tall. It produces awesome flowers and pussies (?) in the spring, and all of our neighbors love it. We’re afraid to prune it back so much, since it’s doing so well. We live in Chicago on a large corner lot and use organic methods only. What would you advise? Thanks!!
Here are some older thoughts about willows in particular that might help.
Thanks! Love my Echo cordless electric. Little maintenance and certainly no stabilizer required. Just get the blade sharpened every year or so.
This is such a handy blog post! November is still a great time of year to get out into the garden. The autumn colours are gorgeous and it’s not (always) too cold to bear. Thanks for sharing your chores list.
I had no idea about the fallen leaves harboring food sources for birds. So the other day when I swept the leaves from my front porch & ramp, I simply shoved them under the yew bush at the head of my driveway. The very next day I saw a cardinal poking around under there!
I am interested in shredding my leaves, and I am wondering whether you are aware of a way to do it that doesn’t involve using electrical or gas power? I am committed to my rake and reel mower, and love manual gardening solutions!
Could you run the leaves over with your reel mower?
If they are very dry (like some aged oak leaves) and not too thick in layers on the ground, it might work a little…but not like a power “mulching mower” or even a regular gar or electric mower’s blades. Never tried it with a reel mower but can’t hurt to experiment. But wet leaves of, say, maple — I doubt.
I use my reel mower to chop up the leaves from my sycamore maples. It works very well as long as the leaves are dry but it does take quite a bit of time and patience as the mower will get jammed if the pile is too deep!
Thanks for the first-hand info, Iona.
Hi,
New follower and I love how informative your blog is! Do you ever post on balcony gardening or know of any resources in Manhattan? I would love to grow food and to plant for birds and animals.
Hi, Marissa. That’s a great question and actually I’d like to tackle it on the next podcast Q&A, taping later this week with my friend Ken Druse. It’s not something I have done but Ken has, and he is more connected to the NYC community than I am these days so let me find out more. Stay tuned!
Hi Margaret
Can you recommend a shredder? I would like to use my leaves but we have so many that they mat. Our mower isn’t really very good at mulching. Thanks
I covet a “Cyclone Rake,” a sort of wagon attachment behind a tractor or riding mower, that shreds and collects. But that of course doesn’t do branches.
I’m doing good on the November list, but we haven’t had a killing frost yet so I’m also hanging on to tomatoes and a lot of flower containers on the patio!
Thanks for these timely reminders, well organized and presented sensibly. With many years of gardening under my belt, perusing your lists becomes a pat-myself-on-the-back exercise as I have executed many of these chores spontaneously. Today was a Dahlia digging day, totally worth it. To see their flowers right up until frost and to be able to make stunning bouquets with such a wide range of colors is heavenly. So many gardening acquaintances rebuff my suggestions to invest time in Dahlias. It’s not at all difficult to excavate, rinse and dry the tubers. Then they can be “teased” apart and voila, multiplied! That is an especially gratifying November chore. Personally, I am ecstatic to bid farewell to a stinking hot 2016 growing season.
Did you let your dahlias rest after the first frost? To harden the skin on the tubers? We just got our first frost on 11-11. I’m in town and have lots of protection. I’m afraid they will mold if I don’t.
Marcia
I do let cannas and dahlias frost, then I dig them, then I let them rest a bit in a protected spot before I store them. Here are some tips (scroll down this story).
Thank you! I enjoy your blog very much. I see from your comments that you have a pond. Do you have any tips for duckweed elimination? We live in the Pacific Northwest
Hi, Mo. My little garden pools are artificial, and not connected to any natural body of water, so I actually add duckweed and other floating ponds plants like Azolla (bought by mail order) each spring, to shade the water and prevent algae growth.
Duckweed goes crazy when there is a lot of nutrients in the water, so one step to take (besides using a net to scoop off the excess and composting it) is to reduce the buildup of rotting organic material like fallen leaves in the bottom of your pond. I don’t know how big it is — mine is only 8 by 12 maybe.
I was just wondering where you get your duckweed from. In the past I ordered giant duckweed from a vendor on Amazon located in Florida. This past year it wasn’t available.
There is a place in New Jersey, Waterford Gardens, where they have all sorts of aquatic plants and everything else! I think they have mail order but I like going there. It is a lovely place to visit and the people who work there are very nice. There is another place, Garden State Koi, which is in Orange County, NY, which has a lot of stuff and great people who explain everything.
I buy my floating plants from them by mail, Lauren — they have been in the biz for many years and I like them, too.