My Central Otago Garden Tasks In November 2025

See ya later, October weather

Fingers crossed that October's weather has passed, and we can start enjoying more spring-like days. It certainly feels like the garden has suddenly realised it’s spring and has come to life.

As well as all the perennials looking incredible, so too are the weeds, but the way I manage them is by getting out whenever I can and doing a little bit of weed pulling regularly.

Let' Dive Into My Central Otago Garden Tasks In November

Key November Garden Tasks for me will be:

• Keep clearing out the garden beds and amending the corn/watermelon and tomato beds with all the goodness they need to thrive—compost, sheep pellets, and broken-down manure.

  Now remember, here in central, it’s not quite time to plant those tomato plants unless you can put them into a glasshouse, but not long now, maybe mid-November. I find the best way to test if the soil is warm enough for tomatoes is if you poke your finger into the soil and it still feels cool, it’s not time.

• I’ll finish off the glasshouse; it just needs irrigation and some more goodness. I will start planting my cucumbers and chili in there in the next few days as the temperatures in there have been pretty consistent.

• It's time to plant out my brassicas finally and to add more pea seedlings to the frames. I had a terrible germination rate in my peas this year, so if I want peas for Christmas, I’ll need more now, so off to the garden centre for me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

• And finally, I’ll begin sowing my leafy greens, just a row of each, and then I’ll continue with that every couple of weeks for a consistent supply over summer.

A couple of other tasks for me will be:

• Tidying up the raspberry and currant bushes. Each spring, you will get this tender spring growth from the base of the plant. At the moment, you don’t want the plant to focus on that; you want it to focus on the fruit it should be growing, so I like to trim these back. It doesn’t harm the plant, and later in the season, you can let them grow as this is where next season's stems come from.

• I’ll sow more beetroot, spring onions, and possibly basil and parsley.

• I’ll be checking in on my garlic to see how it’s bulbing up. I gently dig one up and see where the size is at. I will continue with feeding the garlic every 2 weeks with seaweed tonic and removing any weeds that grow around it.

• And finally, I like to head out in the morning, coffee in hand, to have a wander around, checking in on things, checking in on any pests that may turn up, pulling the odd weed, and just generally checking to see how new plants are faring.

And my final words on the garden: never think that a frost won’t turn up when you least expect it.

Always have protection at the ready because you don’t want all that effort to be killed off by one pesky cold snap.