6 Surprising Plants You Need to Start in November

Many gardeners have retired indoors for the year, but if you ask me that's a mistake because there is still plenty to be sowing this month, even if all you've got is a windowsill. I've had a little rummage through my seed box and have selected six crops perfect for sowing right now, including seeds you'll be glad you started off now because they'll crop right through winter. Something that positively relishes the chilly weather. And even something that grows in the dark. So grab yourself a brew and let's get sowing. So first up is a true workhorse of the garden. And to be honest, one of my favorite awesome sowings, and that is fava or broad beans. So now they'll patiently sit through the winter and then explode into life in spring, ready to give you some of the very earliest pickings of beans. And being legumes, they will also leave your soil richer than when they started. How obliging of them! Now, fava or broad beans are also incredibly good for the old noggin, and if you would like to know how they can improve your mental health, yes really, then I will link to our video on that down below. The trick for us is to sow a variety that's bred specifically for sowing at this cooler time of year. These will be harder, tougher kind of specimens that pretty much laugh in the face of frost and if you're looking for a few ideas then here are a few to get you started. So I've chosen a sunny corner of the bed here. I say sunny, it's as sunny as it gets at this time of year. You'll have to take my word for it and I'm applying just a little bit of organic fertilizer here. This is just chicken manure pellets. Now importantly the soil here is quite well drained and that's important. Often it's the cold wet claggy soil, that saturated soil, that can be the nemesis of beans rather than the cold itself. So what I've done is I've laid out my seeds ready to go in a sort of square formation about 20 centimeters or eight inches apart in both directions. I'm planting a relatively small block here but if you had a really big area you could choose to plant them in rows 30 centimeters apart and then space them a little closer within the row, say six inches or 15 centimeters, but this block formation works just fine and it's already been dug over. You could use a It's nice and soft so I just use my fingers and they're going in about two inches or what's that five centimeters deep. There we are. Very satisfying planting these big chunky seeds I have to say. And like all of the things we are mentioning today, you can add broad or fava beans to your garden plan. Just pop them on your plan, draw them out and there it will calculate exactly how many you can fit in the space you have. Now because I'm a bit of a stickler for uniformity, I'm going to sew a few spare ones into pots just in case to kind of gap up should they not all germinate. But what if mice are a problem? And we talked about this last month, didn't we? Well the solution is to sew into deep pots or plugs like these and keep them under cover out of their way. These can be sewn exactly as before, a couple of inches deep, and then kept out of the way of of mice until it's time to plant them which it will usually be around late winter. Now, fava or broad beans are hardy, but if you're in say zone six or below, and temperatures plunge to about 15 Fahrenheit or minus nine or lower, then you are probably better off just waiting till spring to sow them. Come spring, once they launch into growth, just support the plants with some stakes and some horizontal twine or string just to stop your plants from flopping over. And then once they've grown a bit higher and they've started flowering, Pinch out the top inch or so of growth. Now that might seem brutal, but it will really deter black fly or black bean aphids from getting hold and they absolutely love that soft growth. Removing the tops will also encourage the plants to focus on pod production. And those pods are best picked young and tender for the most smoothest, butteriest pods or beans you've ever experienced. Now, strictly speaking, our next crop isn't a sowing but it is a fantastic way of getting more plants for free and that's dividing rhubarb. And now's the time to do it once the plant has died back and you've just got these old leaves left here. So our first job is to clear away all these soggy leaves here so we can see what we're working with. If your crown of rhubarb, and crown is just the word we use for where the leaves and roots meet, this sort of chunky bit here, if that's five years old or more or you find the stems are becoming increasingly weak and spindly, then dividing and splitting up your rhubarb is an excellent way to keep things young, productive and vigorous. Hmm, maybe I should split and divide myself. It's also just a great way to sort of share your rhubarb crown with friends, but doing this every five to ten years is a must to keep things healthy. So the first job is to get in there with a sharp spade or a fork, get in all the way around the perimeter of the crown here, and dig the whole thing up, and this is where a bit of muscle is required. Now what we're looking for is something like this, a really big fat healthy bud. It'll often be pink sometimes especially later in the sort of winter. This thing here is absolutely perfect because it's really healthy and it's got some good healthy roots as well so we'll replant that. This is quite an old crown so this is the middle of it and can you see how it's all just kind of like cardboard? Well that's dead and that middle bit can just be chucked onto the compost heap. We're going to replant the outside bits for that vigorous growth. I'm pretty happy with this. I've got four or five new plants here and I've got the old discards there from the center of the crown that are going to go on the compost heap. So now that's all that's left to do is to go ahead and plant that. So I'm going to choose this one here. It's got three or four fat juicy buds on it and a great root system and rhubarb loves to be in a sort of part shaded We did spot away from the worst of the heat anyway and into very rich soil. Rhubarb does like a rich and well-drained soil so I'm going to add this lovely garden compost to the planting area here. A bucket or even two buckets if you have it to spare will really help your rhubarb crown get off to a fantastic start and there we go and just sort of lightly dig it in like that and then we'll get on and plant. So let's plant and I'm going to dig a nice deep hole here, deep enough to accommodate the root that's been taken out there. And there we have it and the object is to plant it at the same depth it was at before so the buds will just be at the soil surface or ever so slightly below. There we are. This is a great planting hole. I reckon it'll be very happy in here and I'm just planting it where the original crown was and that's absolutely fine but I've got four more bits to plant elsewhere. And I'm going to water it in now to settle it all down. If you're going to plant more than one bit of crown near each other to create a really big clump then leave about three foot or 90 centimeters between them. And then to finish off just a bit of mulch. I've just got these sort of sticky bits here but that'll help. Now then a little bit of patience is needed with a freshly divided rhubarb. In the first year after planting we don't want to harvest anything at all. It needs to concentrate on getting bigger and bulkier again. In the second year you can take a few stems and the year after that just go for it. Come spring with all those freshly planted sections you'll have young plants really raring to go and that's not bad for a little bit of spade work and a bit of muscle. Next up the mighty garlic. Only last week I planted my raised beds with garlic and you can watch my video on that which I'll pop a link to down below. But this time we're going to plant them into containers. Now there are a number of reasons you might choose to do that. One, it's more space efficient if you haven't got much room. Two, if your soil is really wet and soil is claggy and cold through the winter then this is great because it will allow better drainage. And thirdly, if you've had problems with a disease called white rot, that's really bad news and can sit around in the soil for years. Growing them in containers means you can still enjoy garlic free of any disease problems. So to plant the garlic I'm choosing a container that is at least 8 inches or 20 centimeters deep, something like this is fantastic. And you'll see here that I'm adding all-purpose potting mix and then I'm adding just a few handfuls of grit as I go just to help with the drainage. I'm not sure it's essential but I have this bag here and this is the kind of perfect opportunity to improve that And there we have it. Now we're going to select our garlic wisely. We could buy it from the supermarket and just plant it, but the trouble with that is it may carry a disease risk and it might not be suited to your climate. Instead, buy garlic bulbs sold specifically for planting. And there are two types. Hardnecks, which have a flower stem called a scape, and those are really hardy, the bulb. And then softnecks, which are perfect for milder winters and they store really well. So now it's time to split apart the bulb like that into individual cloves and I'm choosing the biggest plumpest cloves because those will give the biggest bulbs in the end. And then it's just a question of planting. Something like this here is about a foot or 30 centimetres or a bit more across and they need to be about four to six inches or 10 to 15 centimetres apart. So I reckon in this kind of container about five is good. One in each corner and then one in the middle. And they're going to go down so that there's about one or two inches of the potting mix above the top of the clove there and I should say pointy end facing upwards. Most types of garlic benefit from a spell of cold weather to really help them form their bulbs later on, so pop them outside somewhere sheltered and if it's really really torrential all the time you can always bring them under cover into a greenhouse cold frame or anywhere that's just sheltered from the worst of the wet Only water them sparingly whenever the potting mix dries out, which won't be much in the winter. And then in spring, once growth resumes, you can just go in with a sort of liquid feed, something like a fish emulsion, to give these guys a boost. Keep them well watered during the growing season, and then it's time to harvest when the lower leaves start to yellow. Then you can just harvest them, dry them off and store them. And now for something completely different that doesn't even require any soil. I'm talking about fresh and crunchy bean sprouts, the sorts you get in stir fries and noodle soups. The best bit is they're ready in mere days and you don't even need a garden. So the first thing we'll need are some mung beans like these here. These are just dried from a whole food store. And for a jar this kind of size, about two tablespoons is just perfect like that. And then we need to stir them into life. I'll wake them up a bit and for that, a little bit of lukewarm water. There we go. This can now just sit overnight or for at least sort of 10 to 12 hours just to do their thing. Here are some I've had soaking already and you may or may not be able to see that they're already beginning to swell in size a bit and some of the beans are beginning to sort of split a bit. Now I just need to drain this off and this has got an integral mesh lid here so I can just lay it like that and have it drain out like that. Obviously you do this on the sink indoors and then I'm going to rinse them off like that. Oh a bit neater than me. Give it a swirl around gently and then let that completely drain off. Now the routine from this point onwards is very straightforward. We just rinse them twice a day, fill the jar with water and then pop it on its side to completely drain through. The secret with mung bean sprouts here is to keep them consistently moist but not so they're sitting in a pool of water. If you don't have a fancy sprouting jar like this, Then an alternative is just to secure on a piece of muslin or cheesecloth secured in place with an elastic or rubber band over the top there to hold it in place and then fill and rinse just like that. The best temperature for growing your bean sprouts at is a comfortable room temperature. So these are great for growing indoors and you'll get the whiter, crunchier sprouts if they're kept out of direct sunshine. In fact, even better. Just keep them in the dark in the cupboard. The absolutely crunchiest, whitest sprouts of all. How handy! You don't even need a windowsill. Within just four to five days you'll have sprouts that are a couple of inches or around five centimeters long and are ready to enjoy. Give them a final rinse, drain them off, and then store them in the fridge to enjoy as soon as possible. Bean sprouts are best lightly cooked, especially if you're serving them to children, the elderly, or anyone with a weakened immune system. And how about a real taste of summer in the depths of winter? Well, that's what basil promises. Not an obvious choice for this time of year, granted. Just the smell of basil is enough to transport you to a sunny Mediterranean hillside. Now, this is the last of my summer basil here, about to be covered by a frost. But sow it now and you can have fresh basil to pick for pizzas, pastas and salads right through the winter. So long as you keep it on a sunny, warm indoor windowsill. It's worth remembering that basil loves warmth and plenty of sunshine. So we're going to need to mimic that as best we can because this is obviously not the brightest time of year and it's only going to get darker. So the sunniest, warmest windowsill in the house is where your basil is going to sit. And maybe choose a variety that's good for growing in containers, such as that lovely Greek basil or something like the classic Genovese would work well as well. Sowing is very simple. Get your pot, fill it with your screened or sieved potting mix. That's just to remove any lumps because basil seeds are quite small. Pat it down like that. Now, if you don't have a spray gun thing like this here, which gives a nice even light spray, then you could water the pot at this stage to wet it so that you're not then blasting out the seeds once you've sown them. Anyway, nice and flat. Take a small pinch of our seeds like that, and then just sprinkle them over the top. Here we are. And then to finish, just the finest, finest suggestion of more potting mix, just so the seeds disappear from view. And that's to keep them kind of moist, consistently like that. There we are. And then let's get on and give it a water. And then to finish, basil likes to germinate in the warmth and in a nice kind of humid environment. So to help with that, just going to put over a clear bit of plastic. This is cling film or glad wrap, I think it's called in some places. And on goes our band there to keep it in place. Now this is going to go indoors into the warm. Basil germinates best in the kind of 70 Fahrenheit 21 Celsius, so a warm indoor room is going to be perfect. As soon as the seedlings come up, they'll go onto the sunniest, warmest windowsill I can find, and then I will thin out the seedlings so there's just fewer in there, maybe five or six little seedlings, and then grow them on. The secret to your basil is not to over water because they'll hate sitting in really wet, cold potting mix. Do keep them away from cold windows on frosty nights so they're not trapped behind a curtain keeping in that cold air. And the best way to harvest them is just to pinch off leaves just above a junction where there are two more leaves to encourage the plants to bush out and produce even more leaves for picking. It may be the middle of autumn but it seems that some plants haven't quite got the memo, like the tomatoes here, still just about cropping, and these guys down here, these beautiful French marigolds framing the path here. But you know what? The first frost isn't far away, so we need to start making plans for flowers in the spring, and for that I've chosen some beautiful bulbs. What I've gone for is really pretty species narcissus. Now these guys are semi-natural and they have really open flowers so it's great for early forage for bees. The flowers are really easy to access and get all that beautiful pollen and well there you go it's a question of just planting them in a rough kind of naturalistic format just all the way along the path here. And they're going to go about four to six inches deep. As a rule, a very rough rule of thumb, you want twice the bulb's height above the tip of the bulb, so the bottom will be about there where my thumb is. Now I had a fancy bulb planter somewhere but I can't find it for the life of me, so back to the old fork. It's a little investment in the springtime cheer isn't it? It's all too easy to concentrate on those vegetable garden flowers that are flowering their hearts out in the summer but Having something to look forward to in spring will warm the heart. For exact sowing and planting dates tailored to where you are don't forget to try out our Garden Planner which uses weather data local to you to give you a personalized plan for when to sow, plant and harvest. And you can try it for completely free using our seven-day trial over here. I'll catch you next time.