NOVEMBER UK

General Tasks

• Plant bare-root roses, fruit trees and bushes.
   
• Plant prepared bulbs in bowls for indoor display early next year.
   
• Grow winter flowering Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) indoors.
   
• Tidy borders for the winter by removing stakes, cutting back dying foliage and digging out perennial weeds.
   
• Remove decaying and dead branches on established trees to prevent damage caused by winter winds and gales.
   
• Cut the lawn for the last time this year and clean and store the lawnmower.
   
• Lift begonia tubers, dry them and store them in a cool, frost-free place.
   
• Move bowls of bulbs being forced for indoor flowering into a light but cool position as they show strong new growth. For hyacinths move the bolbs indoors when the flower spikes have emerged 5-8 cms (2-3 in.) above the bulbs or for smaller bulbs, when the leaves are about 2.5 cm (1in) high.
   
• Protect vulnerable border perennials and shrubs.
   
• Cut back one-third of the summer's growth on hardy fuchsias leaving the remaining bare stems as protection over the winter.
   
• Shorten hybrid tea roses and floribundas to reduce damaged caused by the stems rocking in the wind.
   
• Clear leaves as they fall this month so that slugs, snails and other pests have nowhere to hide.
   
• Take hardwood cuttings of trees and bushes and insert them directly into the ground to propagate new plants.
  

  Vegetable Garden

• Sow early peas, broad beans, radish and carrots.
   
• Thin lettuce sown under cover last month.
   
• Cover lettuce, endive and parsley with frames.
   
• Sow green manures - grazing rye and field beans.
   
• Remove perennial weeds by digging out roots.
   
• Dig up rhubarb roots to force in your shed or greenhouse.
   
• Start to force chicory.
  

  Fruit Garden

• Prune soft fruits if you haven't already done so.
   
• Continue checking fruit trees, re-tie wall-trained fruit.
   
• Propagate vines from stems
   
• Hang peices of fat or fat balls on canes around fruit bushes - they attract insect - eating birds.

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