“I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town.
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down.”—Joni Mitchell
The fantastic flaming glory of October is over. In November we tend to retreat inside away from the stripped trees, naked trunks, cold rain, and frozen ground. November is the month when gardeners admit that the growing season is over. One last planting of garlic is an act of hope with each inserted clove. Late plantings of spring-flowering bulbs are made through the frozen crust of soil. By the end of the month, a deep freeze takes hold and we wait for the snows to blanket the ground with an insulating layer of white.
“The melancholy days are come,
The saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods,
And meadows brown and sear.”—William Cullen Bryant
The garden looks barren. Annual plants have been killed by frost. Some will return from self-sown seeds (larkspur, calendulas poppies, bachelor buttons). Others will need to be planted anew next year. Perennials are dormant for the winter with brown stalks topped by seed heads for the birds. Green leaves on leeks, kale, and carrots and red on beets still survive until harvest.
There is a category of plants called tender perennials, plants that are hardy through the winter in their native habitat or in climates warmer than our zone 5. If left in our gardens they will not survive, but there are ways to keep them alive so that they are bigger and better for next season. Some potted plants are carried in to continue growing over the winter. Old traditions such as hanging geraniums upside down in the basement or by an attic window are worth continuing. Tubers, bulbs, and corms (dahlias, gladioli, crocosmia) can be dug and stored in a cool, frost-free environment. Cuttings can be taken from tender plants and rooted. Sometimes they will form roots in a container of water. A better method is to dip the cut end in a rooting compound and insert it into a pot of perlite and keep moist. Coleus, salvias, agastache, and pelargoniums (geraniums) are good candidates.
My preferred method of over-wintering big tender perennials is to cut them down to six inches, dig them up, and plant them in plastic pots. I then carry them down to my cool basement, water them every few weeks while they are dormant, and bring them back to the light in the spring. An unheated, frost free room will work just as well. Once they begin sprouting more cuttings can be taken to increase the number of plants.
Tender salvias from the warmer climates of Central and South America are sources of brilliant color and nectar for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Tall varieties with blue flowers, such as Salvia ‘Indigo Spires’, S. uliginosa, and S. guaranitica provide height and shades of blue all summer long, and even become more brilliant in early fall. Two other salvias, S.elegans (pineapple sage) with bright red flowers and S. confertiflora with wands of rusty orange, only begin blooming by summer’s end. It’s best to plant these in containers to quickly bring inside when frost is likely. Another favorite is S. x ‘Silke’s Dream’, a shorter plant with deep coral pink flowers and a wonderfully poetic name. All these plants survive the winter in pots in my cool basement and, even in the dark, seem to know when spring is near and begin to sprout.
I recently read that snapdragons, Antirrhinum majus, are tender perennials and can be kept over the winter. I have lifted mine from the garden and they have joined my sleeping garden in the cellar.
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night.
Ya-honk! He says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation:
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.—Walt Whitman
The gardening year is over. We can look forward to another year, another growing season and we can help our tender perennials survive through the bitter cold. Sometimes it feels like we need help for our own tender selves in the darkening year in this dark time. Taking care of tender plants and our tender fellow humans will get us through another cold, frozen season. The darkness will pass; the cycle will continue; spring is not far away.
“Try a little tenderness.”—Otis Redding
November 2019
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