POTS & PLANTS

NOVEMBER GARDENING

By Peter W. Gribble

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Letting your garden go a bit wild in the autumn (though maybe not quite this wild!) will bring its own rewards.

The spring flowering bulbs are planted, the perennials dug and divided, the beds mulched, there’s nothing to water; the garden is put to bed. What is there to do in November?

Bargains are to be found in garden centres eager to get rid of this year’s inventory. The range of the selection is smaller compared to the start of the growing season, but in late fall 50 to 75 percent discounts on trees, shrubs and dying perennials are not uncommon. Perennials are not really dying as such, but dying back and going into dormancy awaiting a warmer day. A four- inch plant typically around $4.99, at 75 percent off is now a mere $1.25. This is the time to buy items in flats of 15 to 18 individual pots. There may be nothing to see in the pot except dead, dried leaves of a once verdant plant but under the soil a plant sleeps until next spring. At this time you can plant drifts of favourite plants, economically.

Leaving the planting of spring blooming bulbs until now will also have the same financial dividends since these, too will be being discounted. One year, I was able to afford some of the expensive ornamental onions at 50 & 75 percent off and put in a ‘mass planting’ of them. Although spring bulbs like to be planted during the September and October window to establish their root systems, don’t worry if you miss it. One February, I discovered a misplaced bag of daffodil bulbs and planted them right away. In the spring, a month later, they came up as if they had always been there.

Be careful where you plant things at this late stage. Life in the garden is still settling in for the coming winter.

People wonder the degree to which plants should be cut back and how much of a garden cleanup is necessary. Everyone has their own style, but mine was becoming less and less interventionist as I grew aware of its impact. The final evidence came one fall years ago when a family crisis postponed the cleanup. When I was about to resume it two months later in November, I saw how delighted the birds were with the seeming neglect. There were many more birds and more varieties with more places for them to hide, explore, and chase each other, plus extra sources for seeds, and late season bugs and slugs. It was fascinating to see how winter juncos knew exactly how to open the thin, narrow seed heads of the Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis), their version of quick shucking an oyster.

With Cornell University’s study published in Science this September reporting North America has lost 1 in 4 birds since 1970 – that’s nearly three billion birds in the past 50 years - a little less garden cleanup might help lower some of this horrendous trend.

Left alone, Nature will have her way, although I admit to being dismayed knowing the rosa rugosa will be suckering everywhere by March and that I’ll be pulling up extra oregano plants from which the birds didn’t get the seeds. Ditto the fennel and the other things a neurotic gardener will despair over. With every passing year my garden is getting wilder and wilder, but the life it’s supporting is becoming as intriguing as the gardening itself.

Another reason for postponing the cleanup until spring are the surprises.

Clean up too early and you’ll miss a late flowering rose, a Gaillardia or a lavender, which bees of all sorts love. Sitting on the back porch on warmish fall days, I saw the same small bumblebee doing her rounds and returning to the same stalk of Heuchera flowers over an eight day period. Had I cut back and tidied up she would’ve gone hungry. You could time her, usually between 4 and 4:30. ‘Oh, there’s the 4:15 bee!’ She was a reliable show until all the Heuchera flowers had bloomed and were done.

I saw this regular timed behaviour in varieties of bumblebees during spring and summer as well. Same time, same flower, same look alike bumblebee. After a while, you can distinguish one bumblebee from another even if she’s from the same species. Honeybees likely do this as well, although telling one honeybee from another is tricky. Yet when you see a honeybee’s precise return to the exact spot on the rim of a pebble tray for a drink of water (as well as waiting for it to become available) the sense you get that this is the very bee you saw just minutes ago is hard to shake.

Some dead perennial stalks have hollow interiors where beneficial insects hibernate, so don’t touch them until the spring. Leaf litter left on the beds provides protection from the elements and predators for the many varieties of bumblebees and other pollinators.

Remaining leaves from trees are either collected where there’s an excess or mown into small bits and left to decompose into the grass for the lawn’s benefit. Collected leaves are stuffed into big green garbage bags, which are punctured with a few holes to allow moisture and air in to aid in the slow composting. Left outside in the bags, the leaves will eventually break down in about a year’s time into the superb soil amender called leaf mould, beautifully rich and high in potassium. Nothing like it.

Postpone the cleanup until the spring. Yes, cut back roses and other plants when the risk of frost is over (usually some time in March) but leave the hollow-stemmed perennials until night time lows are consistently close to 10 degrees centigrade to allow the hibernating bugs to emerge. It’s also the same temperature when fresh grass seed for the lawn germinates. Another little nudge from Nature.

As the leaves continue to fall, one of the pleasures of gardening – even in November – is just sitting in its midst and watching it slowly go to sleep.