Texas Kitchen Gardening in November
Things are consistently cooler. Days are getting shorter. Winter is coming.
What do we do in our small-space garden?
November is all about preparing for the first freeze. Our Average First Freeze date in Central Texas is somewhere between late November and mid-December depending on whether you live in the Hill Country, in East Austin, inside the city or in the suburbs. The exact date is less important than making sure you are prepared. So how do we prepare?
Prepare your frost protection.
Warm-season plants still in your garden, like peppers and tomatoes, will not survive even a couple brief hours at a light frost. You may not be growing them anymore, but if you are, you can spare their life in a light freeze - with protection. Frost protection is a blanket that covers your garden, letting in light and trapping heat that comes off the soil, and acting as a barrier from the sharp, cold winter winds. It can also be called row cover, even though your kitchen garden doesn’t technically have rows. It can be propped up off the ground by your trellises, with stakes or curved wires to keep them off your plants, or it can be gently draped over the tops. It should be secured to the ground with clips, landscaping stakes or stones. It can be as simple as a lightweight bedsheet, or else it can be a garden fabric ordered online or in many garden centers. Do yourself a favor and order it now because trying to go out and buy some a couple days before a freeze is on it’s way is not a good plan. Frost protection also works for your cold-season crops. Delicate leaf crops like lettuces do not love if we get a hard freeze. You can extend their life in the coming early-2022 winter colds by having a cover handy.
Last call for crops!
OK, so it’s not actually the last call for everything you’ll want to plant. But it’s the last call for a lot of what you want to plant, at least to get the most production in a reasonable amount of time. A seed’s ideal soil temps to germinate is around 60 degrees. While our soils are much warmer than the air (often 10-25+ degrees warmer!) as the weeks stay consistently cool, they do cool off, which effects germination rates. Also, the crops that take longer to produce (carrots, onions, broccoli, etc), should be planted now for best results. Yes, you can plant carrots and broccoli in January and February, but unhappy things happen to those plants when it warms up and if planted in February they will most definitely still be in your garden when it starts to warm up!
What to plant in November in a central Texas kitchen garden.
Basically everything we mentioned in our October addition applies here, too. And if you’d like a little more specificity, some exact varieties you may try are below. These varieties are either better suited to our central Texas climate, tend to be pest resistant, less finicky and overall a better bet for a small-space kitchen garden.
Enjoy! :-)