End of Month View – November 2017

/ Steve

This year November has been the major clean up of the garden ready for winter and more importantly ready for spring.17_11_23_7452You can see that most of the herbaceous materials have been removed. In some ways I would liked to have keep more of the seed heads for the birds etc., however, in order to plant the bulbs (over 1500 bulbs, see list here)  and spread mulch we need access to the beds.17_11_23_7453The twiggy material goes through a shredder and is then added is bagged up ready to add to the compost heap, the softer material goes straight on to the heap. Only the pertinacious weeds (eg ones with tap roots) get thrown away. In this way we recycle at least 95% of all the plant material. The green link stakes are stored in one of our outbuildings. Given we have 1000’s of such stakes in many different sizes this is quite an exercise in itself. If anyone has a good suggestion of how to store these stakes I would love to know it.17_11_23_7455A border almost totally cleared ready for bulbs etc

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And the same corner in August!

17_11_28_7465Tulip bulbs ready for planting17_11_28_7464And the under-gardener planting bulbs on a cold, crisp November day.

17_11_24_7462Now we have easy access to the climbing roses I need to turn my mind to pruning and tying in the new growth.17_11_28_7463To the right of the pond more tulips bulbs waiting to be planted.17_11_24_7460The plastic sheet hanging from the pergola serves two purposes. It keeps the rain off the wooded bench but more importantly it keeps the rain off two small peach trees which are planted in tubs either side of the bench. This should avoid peach leaf curl.17_11_24_7461Another border ready for winter and the spring.17_07_27_6785And the same border in July.17_11_28_746717_11_28_7466Elsewhere we have planted bulbs and have spread a mulch dressing onto the soil. This is Ivy’s bed on the garden map. There is plenty more mulch spreading yet to do!

2017 Gardening Hours
Week beginning Nov 25th Total 2017 to-date Average per week
30 1004 21

If you would like to join in with this meme you are very welcome – add a link to your post in the comments box and please link to this post from your blog so readers can find other EoMV posts. There are no rules about what you post. Maybe you want to focus on one area through the year or give a general tour, whatever suits you is fine with me.

32 thoughts on “End of Month View – November 2017”

  3. I should think my link stake stock is somewhat less than yours but we store ours on an outhouse wall. We fixed shelf support brackets in pairs in a double line of rows all along the wall so I can just hang up the stakes and easily take them down again as needed. No tangling up! With a bit of forward planning you can adjust the gap between your pairs of brackets to suit the different sizes of link stakes, making it even easier to organise and store them.
    Here’s my link for this month: https://www.rustyduck.net/2017/11/30/flipped/
    My, it’s getting cold out there. Good luck with the mulch spreading!

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  4. Pingback: End of Month View: a Quick Ramble Round the November Garden | Rambling in the Garden

  5. I am always intrigued to see how many hours you have spent working on your garden, Steve, as I have no idea what the sum would be for me – perhaps I will see if I can get into the routine of keeping tabs – how do you record yours? Your borders look wonderfully tidy – I look forward to having a similar situation here! My plant supports are stored in the bothy, which is a backless folly, but I don’t have 1000s of them!! How tall are the link supports you use? I am currently planning additional support for next year so would welcome info on what you use. My EOMV post is at https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/end-of-month-view-a-quick-ramble-round-the-november-garden/

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    • hi Cathy, I use the full range of link stakes. Recently I have brought more of the 1 metre size which I found useful for the very tall herbaceous plants. However when you use four to produce a square support I find the square too large and the plants tend to blow to one side. So I am experimenting with extra supports fixed to the top of the stakes eg adding diagonals to the square. Don’t know if this makes sense.I have used harrrods rusting stakes which are stronger than the original and the rust is more natural.

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      • Thanks for that, Steve. I too like the rusted ones and a local metalworker has made me some stakes with a ring at the top that I thread rope through so I can use them in 2s or 3s or 4s – the cost still adds up though!

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    • thanks Sarah, I do not lift any bulbs so many come back each year so the ones I have planted are in addition to the many already in. Yes the spring season can be spectacular.

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  7. Pingback: End of month view – November 2017 – garden ruminations

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  10. It’s beginning to look ready, I love when things are all cleared out and put to bed and just waiting for spring, and the final pictures of the perfectly mulched beds really say that. Congratulations on getting so many bulbs in, I can’t wait to see the spring photos!
    My garden looks far different. It’s a mess of frozen plants and winter mulches and won’t look neat agin until March at least!

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    • Thanks Alison. You and Karen are the bloggers who have seen the garden many times and now you can see how much effort goes into it. I expect you will see the garden in April when the Gardens Trust has Tim Richardson speaking here.

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  16. Cleaning all those beds and planting all those bulbs is no small undertaking… Good thing you have help! As for the link stakes – if they are what’s in the 5th photo – I think I would devote some wall space, and install brackets to hang them on, sorted by size. That way, they’d be off the floor, untangled, and relatively easily accessible.

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    • Thanks for your comment. The undergardener is actually my wife and we jointly look after the garden. I agree with your thought on link stakes and already do something similar. They do get in a real mess if you just pile them on the floor.

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