Prune currants, apples and pears, stake your sprouts and watch out for feathered friends
Mild autumns are all very well but a touch of frost helps kill off pests and diseases and it also helps to sweeten parsnips that are still in the ground.
These can be left in the soil until you need them, along with leeks, but you may want to lay fleece around these to help with lifting them if the ground is frozen when you need one for the soup.
November is a good month to plant bare root fruit trees and also to spread grease bands around existing ones in order to prevent winter moth damage.
Apples and pears can be pruned now, but leave cherries and plums until summer to avoid silver leaf disease from finding its way into wounds in the branches. You can also prune redcurrant and whitecurrants now. If you are growing brassicas, then check these over regularly and remove any yellow leaves to stop the rot from spreading, remembering to stretch netting over them afterwards to protect them from pigeons, which will reduce them to tatters in a few hours if given the opportunity.
And there are plenty of wood pigeons around at the moment, gathering in large flocks to peck amongst fallen leaves and on recently-turned ground. These hungry birds do need to eat, but not necessarily from your vegetable plot.
If Brussels sprouts have a leggy appearance, then stake them to protect them from high winds. Left unstaked, the sprouts themselves will develop an open habit instead of forming the sort of tight buds that you want to serve up for Christmas dinner.
If the weather is too wet or cold to allow for any work, then it is worth starting to plan next year’s crops, working out sowing times, devising rotations to prevent diseases building up in the soil, and picking out new varieties that you may not have tried before.
Some things, like Moneymaker tomatoes and Charlotte potatoes, are so tasty and reliable that it is tempting to grow these year after year, but alongside old favourites it is always worth trying something new, or searching out a heritage variety for traditional flavour.