This Month In Your Garden - November

“Dull November brings the blast, then the leaves are whirling fast.” – Sara Coleridge

The month of leaves and tulips. If you have a largish garden and trees shedding leaves everywhere, you’ll save a great deal of time by investing in a power blower. You’ll quickly clear the lawn and borders to create piles of leaves you can bag up to make leaf compost or pile them onto the compost heap.

The Lawn Care Guide - November

One man went to mow...

The traditional counting rhyme was probably written to help children learn numbers at harvest time.

The change in the weather brought down by arctic wind probably signal the end of mowing for now but there may be pockets in warmer parts of the country still warm enough for the grass to keep growing.

Lawn Care: Questions and Answers

Q. We have rings of darker, taller grass on the lawn and mushrooms have appeared. Can you explain this?

The Vegetable Plot - November

“The gardener's feet drag a bit on the dusty path and the hinge in his back is full of creaks." -  Louise Seymour Jones

Around this time we get the first frosts, if you haven’t already, and so it’s time to lift parsnips and let their sweetness accompany what’s on the autumn warming menu.

But that will be at the end of the day when you’ve got the digging done and the manure spread on the vegetable bed to rot down over winter, divided and planted rhubarb, forced chicory and planted the asparagus bed.

The Big Glut Recipe - November

Michel Roux Jr’s pumpkin and swede crumble

Serve as a veggie main with the balsamic dressing or as a side with meat and gravy

Ingredients

• 100g unsalted butter, chilled
• 150g plain flour, sifted
• 1 heaped tsp flaked sea salt
• 100g cheddar, grated
• 75g almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts, chopped
• 300g pumpkin (peeled weight)
• 300g swede (peeled weight)
• 300g butternut squash (peeled weight)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• ¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 fresh rosemary sprigs
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped