Kalendarium Hortense - November

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of November.

Carry Compost out of your Melon ground, or turn and mingle it with the Earth, and lay it in Ridges ready for the Spring: Also trench and fit ground for Artichoaks, &c.

Continue your Setting and Transplanting of Trees; lose no time, hard Frosts come on apace: Yet you may lay bare old Roots.

Plant young Trees, Standards, or Mural².

Furnish your Nursery with Stocks to graff on the following year.

Sow and set early Beans and Pease till Shrove-tide; and now lay up in your Cellars for spending, and for seed, to be transplanted at Spring, Carrots, Parsneps, Turneps, Cabbafes, Caulkly-flowers, &c.

Cut off the tops of Asparagus, and cover it with long dung, or make Beds to plant in Spring, &c.

Now, in a dry day, gather your last Orchard fruits.

Take up your Potatoes for Winter spending, there will enough remain for Stock, though never so exactly gathered.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

² - Mural trees: trees trained against a wall.

³ - Shrovetide: the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.