The Garden in November

One last peep before it goes to sleep

I’m honestly surprised to be doing a November update of the garden because I didn’t have high hopes at all for it at this time of year, but here we are. I think that it’s been a warmer than usual month, and the lack of rain probably helped the plants stay healthier for longer. I haven’t stopped having flowers all year, and right now the table is filled with them. But this weekend we’re supposedly getting our first freeze, and then it will be December, and the garden season will be officially over.

Actually it kind of is already, since I’ve taken out most of the annuals and plants that the freeze will kill, and huddled pots into a corner against the wall that I’m really hoping will serve as a windbreak. I took the photos for this post on Monday, and the garden doesn’t look anything like this anymore. The window boxes are on the ground now, the tables are put away. Most of the flowers in these photos are currently in vases and not on the plants, though they were still happily blooming away in late November, which I just can’t get over.

Blooming nemesia, before I cut it back

(Formerly) In Bloom:

• Nemesia: I’ll be bragging about this one in my plant roundup post, because it really has been blooming ever since I got it in spring. Or was until this Wednesday, when I chopped it down and put the plant in a small pot to overwinter. Will it overwinter? It’s not supposed to in this zone, but I’m keeping it in my plastic bin coldframe, so fingers crossed because I really do love it, especially in this color.

• Violas: No surprise here since these ones are supposed to be blooming at this time of year. I love violas too, and keep cutting them for bud vases and for pressing.

• Sweet Alyssum: Also looking healthy despite the cold, and also going into the coldframe for winter.

• Calendula: Did I sow this in late summer? I can’t remember, but I think so. Anyway I’m about to get the first bloom from my plant, and the flower looks darker and redder than normal, which may have something to do with the cold?

Violas covered with rose prunings to keep the squirrels away (have I mentioned that sometimes the squirrels will just pick up a pruning and drop it on the ground? I get so mad)

• Snapdragons: These flowers don’t mind cold either and are still blooming as though it’s still warm out. They’re annuals, but sometimes can survive winter, so I’m leaving mine out in plastic pots as an experiment. For now the flowers are all cut and on the table for a Thanksgiving arrangement.

• Linaria: Kind of wispy now, but still covered with tiny blooms. (Or was: I pulled it)

• Nasturtiums: These have been so impressive this fall. They don’t love hot weather, but the seeds I sowed later in the summer turned out to be some of my best-producing plants. Sadly they won’t survive the freeze, so I took most of them out and cut the nicest looking ones for vases on the table.

Snapdragons, still blooming, violas, a baby cerinthe, and a scented geranium cutting I ended up bringing inside (because apparently I don’t have too many pelargoniums in the house yet)

On Wednesday before the Thanksgiving rains I spent a few hours in the garden to get it ready for winter. It wasn’t as sad as I’d thought it would be, especially since there was some sort of pre-Thanksgiving party going on at a nearby worksite, with lots of music and laughing and shouting. Very festive! Maybe I’ll do a more thorough post on what I’m doing this winter to protect the plants, so more on that later. I also still need to figure some things out, mostly when it comes to winterizing the roses. They’re the plants I baby the most. Last winter I put the Carding Mill in a sort of Ikea bag tent, and it came through ok, but I can’t remember if that plant was already dormant when I did it? Because right now the roses aren’t dormant at all; mystery rose/possible ‘Queen of Sweden’ even has a bud on it that’s so close to blooming that I don’t want to cut it back yet, but maybe I should?

Paperwhites, finally rooted and growing

Indoors

Remember the paperwhites that I planted in water and rocks in a vintage decorative pot? Well, that turned out to be a letdown. My own fault, of course. I couldn’t get any of the bulbs to root except for one that I accidentally knocked down sideways into the water—that one rooted, but also rotted. I don’t know why I thought that the rocks and water method would be safer than the simple dirt in a pot one. At the Union Square Greenmarket a few Saturdays ago I saw lots of pots of paperwhites sitting in damp-ish soil, and they looked healthy and in no danger of rotting, so I went home and planted my surviving bulbs into potting mix. Now they’re really taking off—I’m almost afraid they’ll grow too quickly, since ideally I’d like to have them blooming for Christmas, or maybe afterwards, when I’ll need the cheer.

I will say that Trader Joe’s right now has terracotta pots of paperwhites for around $13.00 or so, which is a pretty good price, especially since some of them are blooming already. They also have amaryllis bulbs—some waxed and some sitting on a thin slice of mossy log, which looks awkward to me, but easy enough I guess since you don’t have to water them. I was considering getting a waxed bulb (they’re cheap—seven or eight dollars) and hiding the waxed part in a pot of rocks, but in the end I found a healthy-looking bulb in Red Hook at Chelsea Garden Center to plant the old-fashioned way. Actually I first went to Lowe’s, where they have tons of amaryllis bulbs, all of them soft and reddish and not great. I like the one I got much better. It’s a pink Blushing Bride from John Scheepers, and I hope it doesn’t bloom until January or February, partly because the pink won’t go with our Christmas decorations, but mostly because (again) I’ll be needing flowers most in the sadder parts of winter. But for now I’m surprisingly OK!

A potted amaryllis bulb with the most wonderful alien-looking shoots just starting to peek out