The Cut Flower Podcast

Keeping Your Cutting Patch Productive: November Gardening Tips

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 98

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Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

In this episode, Roz Chandler covers everything you need to know about maintaining your cutting patch during November. From planting bulbs to soil preparation, there are many tasks to keep your garden active throughout the colder months.

Roz shares practical advice on when to plant tulips and crocuses, how to divide and cut back perennials, and the importance of protecting your soil with mulch or compost. She highlights how to make leaf mould, protect plants that are borderline hardy like agapanthus, and why autumn is the perfect time to plant bare-root roses.

Additionally, Roz discusses ways to ensure proper soil health for next year’s growing season and the importance of testing manure before use. She also gives detailed tips on lifting and propagating plants like dahlias and roses and encourages planning for the spring by looking at seed catalogues.

Throughout the episode, Roz emphasizes the importance of continuous care, even through winter, ensuring that your garden is ready to burst into life next spring.

Key Takeaways

  1. Plant Tulips in November: November is the ideal time to plant tulips because cooler soil temperatures help prevent diseases like tulip fire.
  2. Soil Preparation is Key: Turn your soil while it still retains some heat and protect it with mulch to ensure it’s ready for spring planting.
  3. Leaf Mould and Mulching: Gather leaves to create leaf mould and mulch your plants for protection through winter.
  4. Bare-root Roses and Plant Protection: November is the best time to plant bare-root roses, and make sure to protect borderline hardy plants like agapanthus.
  5. Propagate and Plan for Next Year: Divide overgrown plants, propagate cuttings, and start planning your garden for next year by reviewing seed catalogues and making a list of supplies.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Cut Flower Podcast! If you’re ready to take your gardening skills to the next level, make sure to check out our website for more tips and resources. Don’t forget to join our vibrant community on Facebook—The Cut Flower Collective, where over 7,000 growers share tips and experiences.

For more guidance, visit https://FieldgateFlowers.co.uk and check out our masterclasses, including our Rose Masterclass for in-depth knowledge on planting, pruning, and caring for your roses. Stay tuned for more episodes, and happy gardening! 


don-t-put-your-garden-to-bed-things-to-do-in-the-cutting-patch-in-november

[00:00:00] Roz Chandler: Hello, I'm Ros Chandler from Fieldgate Flowers. You are listening to the Cut Flower Podcast. This is for you if you want to learn more about growing your own cut flowers. We'll cover loads of subjects, things like siting a patch, your soil, manure and compost, seeds and germination, perennials and biennials, foliage and so much more.

[00:00:25] Roz Chandler: We'll have some exciting guests along the way. Thank you very much for listening. So hello, things to do in the cutting patch in November. For me, there's no such thing as putting the garden to bed. There isn't a time of year where the garden goes to bed. It's a nice thought, but it's, I know it refers to just clearing it up and putting it away for the winter, but to be honest, there's so many winter jobs to do to prepare for next year that it's never put away for the winter.

[00:00:53] Roz Chandler: So I wanted to go through some jobs. Thanks. that you could perhaps look at doing in November. So first of all, sowing and planting. Bulbs should preferably have been planted earlier in the autumn. That's everything except tulips and crocuses. The time to plant tulips is November when the temperature starts to drop a little and the soil loses some of it, some of its heat.

[00:01:17] Roz Chandler: These bulbs can be planted right up to the end of November if the weather is mild, before the soil loses all of its heat. Tulips thrive in a colder soil and hence November is better for these and you sometimes can avoid tulip fire by doing this. Number two. Have a little tidy. Prune, cut and divide.

[00:01:37] Roz Chandler: November is your time for soil preparation. Soil can easily be damaged, so make sure you dig up any unwanted plants and turn your soil while it still contains some summer heat. Protect any bare patches of soil. You don't really want anything to be bare in the winter. Protect it with mulch or compost or leaf mould or even plastic sheeting.

[00:01:58] Roz Chandler: This will make the soil easier to plant or sow into next spring. Because we grow on a large scale, we use lots of landscape fabric. We use very good landscape fabric that we can use again and again, and it just keeps the weeds at bay. They always say that you know when your spring has arrived, when the weeds start coming.

[00:02:18] Roz Chandler: So now you can remove all of your annuals because they've done their job now, and sadly I know they're no use to you. Don't be too harsh with cutting back all of your plants though, as these provide habitats for wildlife. And cutting them back too much will mean they don't have homes for the winter, so perhaps consider that one too.

[00:02:39] Roz Chandler: It is still a good time to lift and divide overgrown clumps of herbaceous perennials. Do cut back the yellowing foliage of herbaceous perennials and lift and divide overcrowded clumps to maintain their vigour. Number three, leaf mould. This is something we've been doing a lot of this year and a good purchase for collecting leaves are leaf hands.

[00:03:01] Roz Chandler: And they do what they say on the tin. Leaves can be found in almost any garden and they're perfect for adding to both mulch and compost. Once your leaf pile has transformed into mould and this can take quite a long time. So you need to be patient. Firstly, separate your leaves and keep them in a garden container or a bag or create a little heap in the corner of your garden.

[00:03:24] Roz Chandler: Here at Fieldgate, we created this little bay, we had four wooden poles and we put chicken wire around it and we're putting the leaves in it. The bacteria that break down the leaves needs oxygen to work. So that's why we leave ours in the open. If you collect them in a bag, do make sure you puncture it a few times.

[00:03:44] Roz Chandler: Number four, plant protection. Most plants are fine in the UK but do watch things like ferns, we always fleece our ferns. Protect plants that are borderline hardy such as agapanthus with either a thick mulch, straw or garden We move out our agapanthus, we're growing in pots because we find that is better than out in the patch.

[00:04:07] Roz Chandler: And we tend to move them to the back of the house, which is really quite sheltered. And unless it gets really cold and we have another beast from the east, we will leave them outside. And if it gets really cold, we might either cover them with a bit of fleece or we'll move them into the tunnels.

[00:04:21] Roz Chandler: You just need to watch that. If you're leaving your dailies in the ground, be sure to cover them with a thick layer of compost. We have in the past used carpet and straw, but we have a feeling that this encouraged slugs this year. We're not sure, we're not scientifically proven, we had always done carpet.

[00:04:42] Roz Chandler: And straw, but this year, for some reason, we have more slugs than normal. So we think we're going to cover this lot with compost. And that's an another thought. If you're going, if you've got horse manure or cow manure, that's well rotted and you've got it on your land, which is amazing, perhaps it's best to test it first before you actually put it on all your plants.

[00:05:02] Roz Chandler: So what we do is we have two tests. We've got one of cow manure and one of horse manure, and we've put some seeds in and we're looking to see if they grow. And they have. And then we're looking to see if the leaves are damaged. So we know our compost is well rotted, it's ready to use, and that things will grow in it.

[00:05:20] Roz Chandler: The worst case scenario, if you put compost on your plants, and actually in some way the compost has something in it, or it destroys the plants in some way that's really quite upsetting. So I would perhaps do that little test as well. Propagation. Root cuttings can still be taken now and throughout the winter.

[00:05:40] Roz Chandler: Things like perennial poppies, mullion verbascum and phlox are suitable examples. I would do that. Root cuttings can be taken. I love verbascum, so I would do lots of that. Mulching, number five. Apply an autumn mulch to protect plants that are borderline hardy. We've talked about that. Plants like agapanthus.

[00:06:02] Roz Chandler: The plant's own leaves of a knife of flora can be tied up and used as protection for the crowns underneath. Clay soils can be workable in the autumn as they are no longer baked hard but not yet sodden and sticky with winter wet. Mulching will help to improve and maintain the soil structure. So if you have a clay soil, the winter is a great time to try and improve that.

[00:06:26] Roz Chandler: Number six is plant your bare root roses. Now is the time to plant your bare root roses, trees and shrubs. And plants are entering their winter dormancy and can be planted out now. And left to establish over the winter before bursting into life in the spring. We have actually got a masterclass on roses on our website, if you're interested, and it covers things like sourcing and planting top 10 varieties for cutting flowers, for cutting roses, pruning for stem length, feeding and deadheading, propagation and how you increase your stock.

[00:06:59] Roz Chandler: Pests and how to deal with them. Aphids being one of the major pests of roses, cutting and conditioning roses for the Vs. So you can find that on Phil gate flowers.co uk. If you follow the course area, it's actually phil Gate flowers.co uk slash product forward slash rose masterclass. Any problems, give me a shout back to DiUS to lift.

[00:07:26] Roz Chandler: If you're going to lift your tulips, do so after the first frost. What we find is when you go out one day, and it'll be a nice sunny day, and you'll go down to your patch, and you'll be having a look, and all your dahlias will be black. This means the frost has attacked them, so they're ready to have some work done on them.

[00:07:44] Roz Chandler: So you can either Dig them up, clean them off, store them in dry compost, sawdust, all sorts of different ways of storing them in a frost proof place. Mice like them, so just be a little bit careful with that one. Here at Fieldgate Flowers we tend to leave about 80 percent in the soil. but we make sure they're well covered up.

[00:08:07] Roz Chandler: And the 20 percent we lift, we propagate. So at this time of year we've gone around and put stakes in and named them about the ones we actually want to propagate from and the others we will leave in the soil. And finally, surely November is that time you can relax, you can indulge, you can look at all your seed catalogues, you can start to plan out your plots for next year.

[00:08:31] Roz Chandler: And also looking forward to Christmas and getting that Christmas list done of all those books and things you'd like to add. I have to say I'm a bookaholic as far as books are concerned. I know we'll do another podcast on recent book additions. My husband says there must be one that arrives every day and I'm not sure it's as bad as that, but it is pretty bad.

[00:08:51] Roz Chandler: If you haven't already joined our Facebook group for more flowery stuff, it's where we put all the things about launching new courses. It's a lovely community of over 7, 000 like minded growers. It's called the Cut Flower Collective and I hope you'll join it. 

[00:09:14] Roz Chandler: Thank you very much. Thank you for listening. This has been the Cut Flower podcast. Please do join us on our Facebook group, the Cut Flower Collective, for lots more hints and tips. Thank you.