Vegetable garden calendar - November

Sowing in open ground

In November, choices are limited, but it’s still a good time to sow peas and broad beans.

For peas, hardy varieties: Very Early Annonay ; Petit Provençal and Douce Provence offer an early harvest and good productivity.

For broad beans, choose variety Aguadulce with very long pods or De Seville with long pods. Two vigorous varieties.

You can also sow tuberous chervil, a biennial vegetable plant with slightly mealy, sweet white flesh, whose flavour is reminiscent of hazelnut. Harvest will take place in June–July.

Under unheated protection (greenhouse, polytunnel or under forcing fleece), you can sow carrots for harvest in spring.

Vegetables to plant

In terms of planting, garlic, white onion and shallot can be planted in November in mild climates but care must be taken to choose varieties carefully and to place them in well-drained, light soil that is not soaked in water, otherwise they may rot.

Certain varieties of garlic are better suited to November planting, such as :

• Germidour, purplish garlic with pronounced aromas;
• Messidrome, very productive white garlic;

For white onion, my preferred variety remains Blanc de Paris.

For shallots, favour planting grey variety Griselle at this time of year.

Last spring cabbages can also be planted, as can winter lettuces under winter fleece.

Vegetables to harvest

If the list for sowing and planting is short, the list for harvest is much longer! Indeed, it is not recommended to leave certain root vegetables such as beetroots or carrots in the ground at risk of attracting voles. Storage in a silo or in a cellar is recommended.

You can therefore harvest:

• Chard
• Beetroots
• Squashes
• Carrots
• Celery
• Curly endives and escaroles
• Lettuces
• Cabbages: heading varieties, Brussels sprouts
• Endives (roots)
• Lamb’s lettuce
• Leeks
• Turnips
• Parsnip
• Black radish
• Salsify

And a few tomatoes under glass or in sheltered spots. If these are still green, you can store them indoors, somewhere warm, to let them finish their ripening gently.

In November, in the vegetable garden, it's also a good time to...

• Drain and store watering hoses and protect outdoor water outlets against frost;
• Clean emptied plots, remove bolted vegetables that will no longer yield and take them to compost;
• Establish a green manure such as Mustard on bare plots; To discover all secrets and benefits of green manure, click here.
• Remove outdoor tomato plants, take them completely out of garden to prevent disease spread. For last tomatoes under glass, you can remove foliage to let more light through, which will speed ripening.
• Store green tomatoes indoors to ripen;
• If you have escarole chicory in garden, cover with forcing cones or winter cover;
• Check seed stock for next year;
• Cut back herbs and mulch around their base;
• Clean base of fruit bushes then prune once foliage has gone and cold is well established;
• During day, in mild weather, ventilate frames, cloches, tunnels…

And don’t forget, 25 November is St Catherine’s Day; date when all wood takes root! (bushes, fruit and ornamental trees); waning vegetation and cool weather provide optimal conditions for establishment of trees, fruit trees and berries that you plant as bare roots.

Sowing, planting and harvest calendar

please note

This sowing calendar is provided for guidance only. Bear in mind that sowing, transplanting, planting and harvests can be earlier or later depending on region and weather. Different varieties of same vegetable plant can also result in earlier or later harvests.

You can refer to our map to find which climate zone corresponds to your area.

Before sowing or planting vegetables and aromatic plants, take weather into account and check forecasts for coming days!