"November" was the ninth month of the Roman year. On our calendar, November is is, of course, when we celebrate Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving. It's also National Apple Month, International Drum Month, National Pepper Month, National Raisin Bread Month, and Native American Heritage Month.

Here's what to do in your Northern New Mexico garden in November. (Many thanks to various County Agricultural Extension Services, to Charlie Nardozzi, Horticulturist, of the National Gardening Association, and to Dr. Leonard Perry of the University of Vermont Extension Department of Plant and Soil Science, for some of the material in the sections that follow.)

November Bulbs, Corms, & Tubers

You can still plant hardy bulbs outdoors this month as long as the soil can be worked. Where burrowing rodents are a problem, plant lots of daffodils and other narcissi (pocket gophers and bunnies dislike them) instead of tulips (which gophers and bunnies adore); or sink your tulip bulbs in the ground in fine-mesh wire cages. Remember to plant in a sunny site (6 hours of full sun minimum) and to dig in lots of compost if you haven't already. Add fertilizer, too: about 1 heaping teaspoon per bulb, 2 inches beneath the bulb's bottom. Bone meal attracts rodents, so it shouldn't be used where p.g.'s and b's are a problem; instead use commercial bulb fertilizer or powdered phosphate rock. For more on bulbs  see What To Do In October.

Now is also the time to plant your amaryllis (Hippeastrum cvs.) and paperwhites (Narcissus cvs.) for holiday bloom. For details to how to plant, go to our How To... section. There are tips on both amaryllis and forcing paperwhite narcissi.

November Composting

Rake up any remaining fallen leaves and other garden wastes and store them in a lidded garbage can for the winter. When your kitchen compost pail gets full of compostable food scraps (avoid using meat debris unless you want all the neighborhood's dogs, cats, and raccoons rooting through your heaps), add the scraps to your compost pile with a covering layer of stored leaves from the abovementioned garbage can.

November Containers

Last chance to bring indoors those non-frostproof containers. (See What To Do In October for disinfection tips.)

Throw onto the compost heap any soil left in your used pots. Scrub the pots in hot, soapy water to which bleach has been added (1 tablespoon bleach per gallon of water); then store them. This will ensure that no soil disease organisms overwinter in the pots to infect next year's plants.

Even heavy clay, ceramic, and plastic frostproof containers can crack outside during the winter if there is soil left in them. That's because the water vapor in the soil will expand as it freezes, expanding the soil around it in turn, cracking the pot. So empty out the soil from your outdoor containers. If you want to reuse it for next season, put it into the compost heap.

November Equipment

If you haven't done so already, clean your garden tools before storing them for the winter. Use steel wool to scrub off any light rust. Coat your tools lightly with mineral oil, then hang them up or lay them out on newspaper till you need them next spring. Sharpen shears and pruners, or get a professional knife-sharpening service to do it. And don't forget to drain and roll up your garden hoses (for further info, see "October Watering" in What To Do In October).

Change the oil and spark plugs on your rototiller. Clean the lawn mower (make sure you clean out any dried grass from under the decks of riding mowers) and have the blades sharpened. Drain these machines' gas tanks or by adding a gas stabilizer to a full tank and running the motor for five minutes before putting your machine away for the winter.

Store pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals in a locked cabinet or other high, dry location where they won't freeze.

November Fertilizing & Mulching

How did your garden do this year? Any signs of malnutrition, such as slow or stunted growth, yellowing leaves, or lots of foliage and no fruit? It's easy to underestimate the fertility needs of a vigorous garden, particularly if there are older trees and shrubs around (their roots go sideways as much as they go downwards, and can suck up a lot of the nutriments you add to your other garden beds). Don't fertilize any more this year, but come March, start your trees, shrubs, and perennials on a regular feeding schedule. (More info on this subject to come!)

Mulch your perennial beds with bark, straw (a great insulator!), or pine boughs after the ground has frozen 1 to 2 inches deep.Apply a layer at least 3 or 4 inches deep (6 inches for especially cold or windy sites) around each plant, then, after you've done so, use your hands to gently pull the mulch a couple of inches away from trunks and stems to discourage fungus diseases.

November Greenhouse

Clean up time! Sweep up all the debris and dirt from benches, tables, and greenhouse floor. Throw out any ailing plants (if you haven't been able to revive them by now, chances are they've had it). Wash the sides of your greenhouse with disinfectant. Scrub out all pots with hot soapy water to which bleach has been added (see "November Containers" above). Take an inventory of your greenhouse supplies, so you can start making wish lists for the new season.

November Grasses & Lawns

Don't snip the stalks off your grasses that have gone to seed. Grasses are best left intact until March, when you can then cut them back by about a half. Besides, seedheads attract November birds.

November Herbs

Now's the perfect time to start making your winter potpourri - real potpourri, made of real dried herbs, flowers, leaves, berries, and spices and scented, if at all, with real essential oils distilled from real flowers. All you need to make 4 cups of wonderful, custom, natural, fragrant potpourri is:

1. A pretty box or lidded bowl in paper, wood, or ceramic (to put the potpourri in)
2. 2 and 3/4 cups colorful dried flowers, leaves, and berries, scented or not, such as rosebuds and petals (pink to red); safflowers (rich orange threads); lavender flowers (dark lavender-blue); bay leaves (silver-green); lemon verbena leaves (light green); pink peppercorns (hot pink); shredded oak moss (silver-grey); small dried chili peppers (dark red to black); star anise (dark brown; leave whole); sweet marjoram leaves (pale grey-green), thyme leaves, or a mix of all of them
3. 3/4 cup coarsely crushed or shredded spices, such as allspice berries, cinnamon sticks, clove buds, coffee beans, frankincense tears, nutmegs, orange peel
4. 1/2 cup finely crushed or powdered orris root or sandalwood bark (as a fixative, that is, an ingredient added to absorb and extend the life of the scents from the other ingredients)
5. Essential natural perfume oils, such as true oil of lavender (sweet-spicy); oil of lemon verbena (sweet lemon); true oil of rose (sweet rose; the kind that comes diluted in jojoba oil works just fine); ylang-ylang (powerfully sweet); be aware that oil of orange and oil of pine or spruce are extremely powerful and tend to overpower anything to which they are added, so use them very sparingly - 3 drops instead of 10 (see assembly instructions below).
6. A set of measuring cups (you'll need the 1/2 and ¼  cup sizes at a minimum)
7. A large mixing bowl
8. A small mixing bowl
9. Plastic gloves or 2 wooden spoons (for mixing the potpourri, unless you'd rather use your bare hands, which is my preference)
10. A tightly lidded airtight plastic or glass container big enough to hold at least 5 cups
11. A clean eye-dropper
12. A small mixing spoon

Now you're ready to start!

• Assemble ingredients 2 and 3 in the large mixing bowl. Mix thoroughly with gloved or ungloved hands or with the two wooden spoons (as you'd mix a salad).
• In the small mixing bowl, place ingredient 4 (the fixative). Using the eye-dropper, drop 10 drops of the essential oil of your choice into the ½ cup of fixative, mixing it in thoroughly with the small mixing spoon. It will smell too strong at first; don't worry, it will calm down later. Then transfer the scented fixative into the large mixing bowl of potpourri ingredients, dusting in a little at a time and mixing thoroughly between each addition (the object is to get the fixative thoroughly incorporated into the potpourri).
  
• Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl into the 5-cup airtight lidded container, close the lid firmly, and shake up the container with the potpourri in it. Put the airtight container in a cool, dark place and shake it once a day.
  
• At the end of a week, take off the lid and sniff the contents. If the fragrance is not strong enough, add 5 more drops of essential oil, close the lid, and shake up the potpourri again for another week. Keep doing this until the potpourri is as strongly scented as you like.
• When you feel your potpourri has "aged" long enough, decant it into lidded presentation boxes for your lucky loved ones.

November Houseplants & Tropicals

Day and nighttime temperatures can vary widely in November. Cold drafts blowing through minute cracks in door frames and windowframes can cause houseplants to drop their leaves. Check the caulking around your windows or hang double-thicknesses of heavy plastic over the insides of your windows to help block drafts and trap daytime heat. Alternatively, move your houseplants away from exterior doors. Folded newspapers placed at night between your houseplants and your glass windows can also help protect your plants from nighttime chill.

Remember that humidity tends to be lower in the winter than at other times of the year. Group your plants together to increase the humidity around them, or invest in a warm-air humidifier (your plants will thank you for it!).

You know those outdoor plants you brought indoors for the winter? Well, just about now they should be developing a shiny, sticky substance on their leaves, and maybe some small black or green critters on their leaf undersides. Those are aphids, and to them, your houseplants are Thanksgiving turkey with stuffing and sweet potatoes all rolled into one. Spray Safer's Insecticidal Soap or horticultural oil on both sides of the leaves and stems, and do it regularly: every three days if the plants are infested, then every week or two throughout the winter. And don't let anybody tell you, "Oh, there are just a few aphids; don't bother." There is no such thing as Just A Few Aphids. It's like saying we have Just A Few Rabbits. The aphids you don't see are hatching out underground in your pots' soil.

November Perennials

Hardy outdoor chrysanthemums should be pruned down to 2 to 3 inches high once they begin to die back. Don't prune your woody perennials - such as lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), lavandin (Lavandula x intermedia), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), and thymes (Thymus sp.) - until March. Otherwise, you might weaken them so much the winter cold could damage or kill them.

November Pests & Diseases

Cut grass and weeds around your shrubs and trees (rodents nest in the weeds and can girdle your trunks). Clean up all plant debris and, if it's not diseased, compost it.

November Roses

After nighttime temperatures consistently hit in the 20's, protect your modern hybrid teas against the winter cold by mounding bark mulch around the base of the plants, about 1 foot deep. The mulch should cover the rose's graft union - the swollen part of the stem near the ground. (Antique rose varieties are hardier than modern hybrids and shouldn't need this protection.) Don't prune your rose's canes till spring.

Tie up the canes of your climbing roses so the winter wind doesn't whip them to smithereens. (Don't use string or wire; it can cut into the canes. Use old nylon stockings or the special padded ties that have started to appear on the market.) Speaking of which, if your roses are in a windy spot, you'll need to protect them from the drying and chilling power of the wind by putting them in wire cages: sink four stakes around each bush, wrap chicken wire or burlap around the stakes, then fill the resulting wire cylinder with straw or other mulch (you may have to tie up long canes so they fit inside the cylinder). If field mice are a problem in your area, use Payne's Soil Conditioner, which is a coarse compost, instead of straw. Plastic rose cones without ventilation holes at the top can overheat your plants; don't use them.

Once a good frost hits, remove any remaining leaves from your rosebushes and trashbag them. Disease spores and insect eggs can overwinter on rose leaves, and composting won't kill the little meanies.

November Planting & Transplanting, Trees & Shrubs

Continue to plant trees and shrubs this month as long as the ground can still be worked.

If you have any hardy trees and shrubs in containers that you want to winter outdoors before planting them in spring, it would be a good idea either to sink the containers into the ground or to surround each tub with a large cylinder of chicken wire filled with straw (or Payne's Soil Conditioner if field mice are a problem in your area). That will help insulate the root balls from winter frost damage.

If you plan to get a live Christmas tree this year, rather than a cut one, now's a good time to select the spot where you'll plant it after Christmas is over (live trees should never be kept indoors longer than 5 days). Dig the hole now, while the ground is still more or less workable, rather than after the really hard freezes. Cover the hole with boards so nobody falls in! For complete directions for tree planting, go to our "Expert Advice" tab, then to How to Plant a Tree.

Now's a good time to buy some plastic tagging tape and tag those branches that will need to be pruned in early spring. Remove any broken branches now so they won't clonk somebody in winter windstorms. Remember not to put mulch right up against your trees' trunks because doing so encourages rodent damage. To further protect your trunks from the creeping critters, buy some hardware cloth - ¼ or ½-inch mesh - 28 inches wide. Wrap the bottom 2 feet of your tree trunks with this, and bury the remaining 4 inches of mesh under the soil.

Alternating warm days and cold nights can scald and crack the bark of young, thin-barked trees (such as aspens and maples). To protect them, wrap their trunks with tree wrap, or paint their south- and southwest-facing sides with white, outdoor latex paint. The idea is to reflect away the warm sun rays so the bark doesn't heat up only to be suddenly cooled at sunset.

If you recently planted an evergreen on a site exposed to wind, you might want to consider erecting a windbreak to protect it from excess winter chill and desiccation.  Position sturdy posts on the sides of your tree that are most exposed to wind, generally the west and north. Then take some 4-foot wide burlap (don't use plastic; it doesn't breathe and will overheat on warm days) and, using the posts as anchors, draw it between them to make a burlap "wall."

Don't prune your woody shrubs till spring, or you may weaken them to the point where the cold will damage or kill them.

(For further information on protecting winter trees and shrubs from cold damage, check out the article here.)

Now's also a good time to sow seeds for indoor herbs and winter annuals.

November Vegetables & Fruits

If you grew root crops this year, remember that mature carrots, beets and parsnips can be left in the ground and harvested as needed during the early part of the winter. (Parsnips in particular sweeten after frosts set in.) Just mulch them with a good 1 foot thick layer of straw and dig them up as needed ... Now's a good month for pruning raspberry canes if you haven't already. Raspberries fruit on new wood. So using a sharp pair of pruners, cut off at ground level all the canes that bore fruit this year. Also remove any weak or broken canes. If you grow your raspberries in rows, you can further reduce the number of canes to the strongest five or six per foot of row. The result will be fewer canes next year, but lots larger berries. Also, if you have any winter squashes in storage, check them to make sure they haven't started to rot (turning them frequently helps).

Did you grow strawberries this year? If so, be aware that strawberry beds really appreciate late fall and winter mulch, particularly in low-precipitation areas like northern New Mexico. After the first hard frost lays all the strawberry leaves flat on the ground, apply 3 to 5 inches of clean straw (not hay; hay has weed seeds in it) to protect your plants crowns and roots from cold-kill and drying out.

Grape-growers in the colder areas of the state should consider protecting young grapevines from winter injury (particularly if they're less hardy varieties) by laying them on the ground and mulching them.

November Vines

Winter winds can beat the heck out of vines, so tie up all your vines securely this month using old nylon hose or padded ties (string and wire can cut into the stems, damaging them).

November Watering

Continue to water all your trees, shrubs, and perennials until the ground freezes, and again every time we get a thaw (unless there's plenty of snow cover for the thaw to melt). Evergreens in particular need a good deep watering before freezing, because they continue to lose moisture through their leaves during the winter, especially when it's windy, but can't take up moisture through their roots when the ground is frozen.

November Weeding

Hooray! No more weeding this year (because of course you have already done all the weeding your garden needs). Keep in mind that during the winter all the little seeds from the weeds you didn't yank this year will be snug in their beds, ready to burst up next spring -- for you to yank then.

November Wildlife

Stock up on birdseed! Black oil sunflower seed is the food of choice for most species, because it's high in fat. Finches also like niger or thistle seed. Blue jays (and squirrels) love corn (shelled, cracked, or cobbed). You can also make this all-purpose recipe, suggested by Margaret Hagen of the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension Service: To make 2 cups of mix, stir together 1 cup black oil sunflower seed, 2/3rds of a cup of white millet, and 1/3rd of a cup of cracked corn.

If you have bird-hunting cats, or squirrels, hang up your feeders away from trees and easily climbable structures, as high off the ground as you can. If cats and squirrels aren't a problem, hang your feeders near evergreen trees or shrubs so the birds can have winter cover while they feed. Repair or throw out damaged bird feeders and get new ones. Clean old ones with a solution of 1 part bleach to 9 parts water. Scrub with a brush, rinse thoroughly, and allow to air dry. Take special care now, and throughout the winter, to keep your feeders clean of moldy seeds; they can make birds sick. Hang up suet blocks in wire mesh containers for woodpeckers and other insect-eating birds (they need the extra fat).

Did you know what birds need as much or more in winter than food? Water! Consider purchasing a heated birdbath for our feathered buddies. Be sure to use a grounded, three-pronged outlet to prevent electrocution. Because not all heated birdbaths are alike, be sure that the birdbath you buy is equipped with the following features: (1) a covered heating element to protect the birds' feet from in jury; and (2) an automatic shut-off valve or heat cycling on-off switch, to prevent damage to the birdbath if it goes dry. If you want to give the birds a warm rock to perch on while they rest or drink, find a flat piece of rock - shale or slate - and place it over the heating element.