Garden Tasks for NOVEMBER in Acadiana

By Dan Weintritt and friends

Created for use by the Louisiana Native Plant Society with the Acadiana Native Plant Project.

Made in the style of Dan Gill's Month by Month Gardening in Louisiana, Cool Springs Press, Copyright 1999, 2006

NOVEMBER - To Do

November should be the peak fall month for the garden. The days

are short and beginning to cool, the plants are relaxed, refreshed,

and getting ready for winter hibernation, and wildlife should be busily

feeding away to be ready for the dormant season. Rainfall should be

picking up by now, but continue to care for newly planted or

transplanted plants.

This is a great month to plant new, containerized plants, and

everything you have worked so hard to keep alive this summer.

Established perennials can be lifted and divided or moved now, or

you can wait until the first freeze puts them into dormancy. If you are

going to be re-working your beds this winter, now is the time to mark

where plants are in the areas you will be working, as they may not be

visible after they die back. You wouldn't want to plant something new

right on top of your prized Hibiscus because you forgot it was there!

Even if you trimmed back tall perennials this summer, they might

benefit from a trim if they are finished blooming, or staking or caging if

they have not. Avoid trimming spent plants to the ground; insects like

fireflies and bees will be overwintering as larvae in the base of hollow

stems of perennials. Trimming spent stalks to about 24" is fine.

Gather leaves of deciduous trees and shrubs to mulch your beds.

Weeds do not take the winter off. Many of our cool-season volunteers

are spring annuals from Northern Europe, brought over either

accidentally or intentionally from early settlers to the Americas. Make

sure you are not bringing weeds into the garden along with the

leaves!

Even though some plants could continue blooming until Christmas,

frosts and freezes will begin to knock back the tender, fresh growth of

some in bloom, truncating the garden season. You may choose to

cover your blooming plants before a freeze; this author likes to mist

the foliage the evening before freezing conditions are predicted to

occur. The moisture will act as a mild insulator and prevent damage

from dessication that causes tissues to brown and die off. A sprinkler

set on a timer to go off at 2am is perfect, as the frost damage usually

occurs in those final few hours before dawn.

Make sure that seeds requiring cold stratification are labelled and in

the freezer. Some require dry storage, others moist storage. A lightly

soaked paper towel inside a food storage bag is a great way to

provide seeds with required moisture. Jan Midgley's Native Plant

Propagation is an excellent, comprehensive resource for propagation

instructions, and the only one that this author knows of! It is a self-

published book by a native plant nursery owner with 40 years of

experience; this publication should be available for purchase online.