Why plant trees in November?

Because the tree enters its rest: with no leaves to feed, it spends the autumn and winter rooting into still-warm soil, and starts strongly in spring. It’s also the season of bare-root stock, cheaper and often more vigorous. Tradition adds the descending moon; unfrozen soil remains the only firm condition.

What can you still sow in November?

Little, and that’s normal: broad beans and round peas in mild climates, on fruit days and an ascending moon by tradition, plus a few winter lettuces under cover. Everywhere else, November is a month of planting and of resting the soil, not of sowing.

In the garden · November

Gardening by the moon in November November

November is the great month of planting: the sap flows back down, the trees fall asleep, and the old saying has it that every tree takes root. Bare-root fruit trees and shrubs settle in during the descending moon, and so do white garlic and gray shallot. In the kitchen garden you harvest the winter vegetables as you need them, sow broad beans and round peas in mild climates, and let the covered soil rest.

The essentials

To sow: broad beans and round peas in mild climates, a few winter lettuces under cover
To prune, to plant: bare-root trees and shrubs, white garlic, gray shallot
To harvest: leeks, cabbages, corn salad, Jerusalem artichokes, last roots
Watchword of the month: plant during the sleep

What to do in the garden in November by the moon?

Tradition’s lunar swing gives the month two phases: the ascending moon, where the sap is said to be drawn upwards (sowing, grafting, picking fruit), and the descending moon, where it’s said to flow back toward the roots (planting, pruning, working the soil). In November the descending moon reigns: almost all the work of the month falls to it.

It’s in the descending moon that tradition places the planting of bare-root fruit trees and shrubs, of white garlic and gray shallot, and the gentle pruning of the trees whose leaves have fallen, always outside any frost. The ascending moon keeps the month’s few sowings, broad beans and round peas in mild climates, and the picking of the leaf vegetables for the table.

Which crops to favor, and on which days?

The calendar’s second reading links each day to an organ, according to the constellation the Moon is crossing: leaves, flowers, fruit, roots. In November the root days are the most precious: white garlic and gray shallot are planted then in drained soil, and Jerusalem artichokes are lifted as needed, since they keep better in the ground than in the cellar.

Leaf days serve the harvests of leeks, cabbages and corn salad; fruit days, the sowing of broad beans and peas, whose seed we eat; flower days, the planting of the last spring bulbs. As for the trees, tradition asks just one thing of them: to be planted during their sleep, roots in the warm before the deep cold.

The gesture of the month: planting a bare-root tree

It’s the most rewarding gesture of the year: a bare-root tree costs half what a potted one does and often takes better. Puddle the roots (a mix of soil, water and compost), dig wide rather than deep, keep the graft union above the ground, stake against the prevailing wind. Tradition chooses the descending moon; the tree, for its part, mostly asks for unfrozen soil.

In town, the same spirit holds on a balcony: a small fruit bush in a tub (currant, dwarf raspberry, columnar apple) is planted in this season too. It’s the November purchase that will make the summer jams.

What agronomy says

Rigorous comparisons between plantings “on the right day” and control plantings turned up nothing reproducible: the quality of the puddling, the hole and the settling-in watering weighs infinitely more than the position of the Moon. The calendar keeps its virtue as a metronome: it sets appointments, and it’s regular presence that makes the living gardens.

The lunations of November (exact dates)

Calculated from the ephemeris, in London time, and rechecked every night. Each lunation has its own detailed page.

Frequently asked questions

Why plant trees in November?: Because the tree enters its rest: with no leaves to feed, it spends the autumn and winter rooting into still-warm soil, and starts strongly in spring. It’s also the season of bare-root stock, cheaper and often more vigorous. Tradition adds the descending moon; unfrozen soil remains the only firm condition.
What can you still sow in November?: Little, and that’s normal: broad beans and round peas in mild climates, on fruit days and an ascending moon by tradition, plus a few winter lettuces under cover. Everywhere else, November is a month of planting and of resting the soil, not of sowing.