Hi All!

I've been busy cleaning up the garden. I've done everything from taking out the last of the hot weather veggies (I actually had some green tomatoes in November!), raking up pine tags for next season's mulch, and dividing daffodil bulbs for next spring's garden.

November is Thanksgiving in the US and I'll give you a tip on a fresh -- and free -- decoration for your holiday table as well as some info on the best herb for Thanksgiving.

Enjoy and I'll see you back here in December. 

This past spring I decided to redo a garden bed that had been used and abused for a number of years.  I wanted to transplant some hosta and daylilies in that dead but knew I had some hard work ahead.

Before I dug out the mini-tiller, I dug up all of the bulbs that had been planted years before.  Some still had green foliage attached and some didn't.  The daffodils came out easily, I rinsed off the soil and wrapped the bulbs and paper towel with the foliage peeking out the top.

I stored everything in a brown grocery bag down in my basement for the summer.  Since I run a dehumidifier in my basement all year long, I knew the bulbs would be in a cool dry place.

When I pulled the bag out this fall, I found that the handful of bulbs I'd planted had, over the years, grown some baby bulbs that I could separate.

Now I had a nice crop of daffodil bulbs to replant from the handful I'd originally planted 10 years ago.  Some went into the newly renovated bed and others went into the newest garden bed down beyond rose arbor.

I know next spring I'll have garden beds full of color thanks to the initial buy of daffodils that naturalize.  When you buy daffodils for naturalizing, the bulbs will grow babies and will spread after number of years. 

This is a great frugal way to have more and more color without buying bulbs every year.

Virginia has had one of the warmest, driest falls on record.  Because of this, I left my cherry tomatoes in the GardenRack far longer than I usually do.

My plants are still producing leaves and flowers even though we just had a frost.  I suspect my long-lived tomatoes will give up the ghost in the next week or so because we are scheduled to have temperatures in the upper twenties.

But it's been a great ride.

I really haven't done anything extraordinary to these tomato plants to make some so prolific.  A bit of liquid fertilizer every few weeks, some deep watering when it was scorching hot, and cleaning up leaves that had fallen to inhibit soil-born diseases has given me loads of cherry tomatoes.

The morale?  Sometimes leaving nature alone to do its thing gives you great results.

Do you have nandina bushes in your landscape? If so, here's a great tip for a terrific table decoration that'll cost you nothing.

Nandinas need to be pruned back regularly to keep their tree-like shape and in the fall, they have beautiful red berries. When trimming them, hang on to the sprays of berries by placing them in a brown grocery bag. When they begin to dry out, they turn a beautiful shade of deep red.

Put them in a cornucopia or wind them among fresh fruit on the Thanksgiving table. Use lemons, limes and oranges with Granny Smith apples and you'll have an appealing decoration.

Sage is a great herb that can also be used as an ornamental shrub.  This is an herb I've used for years in soups, stews and stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey.

It can be used both in its fresh form and dried. The purple, golden and tri-color varieties are beautiful as edging plants along a walkway. And if your foot brushes against it, you'll release the wonderful aroma into the air around you.

Unfortunately, if you're growing sage from seed the seed needs to be fresh or it will be slow to grow.  However, you should be able to buy inexpensive sage plants in the springtime at your local garden center.

While sage does prefer a warm sunny location, it does not do well in extreme heat.  It's very easy to grow in containers but you need to be careful not to overwater.

For best results, harvest very lightly the first year.  Sage is a perennial and will come back year after year.  You will have a better crop from the second year onward.

If you're growing sage as an ornamental bush, you'll probably need to replace them every three to four years.

This month, we had a question from a new subscriber, Albert M. in England: What can I do to deter pigeons and foxes from my garden allotment?

Albert, this is a great question and it's one that I'm going to have to research.  I'm sure you're not the only one who has this issue and I will try to find some answers for you over the next month that will allow you to keep these critters at bay by natural means.

Do you have a question for The Frugal Garden Guru?  Please feel free to drop me an e-mail by using the email link on this page.

There's not much to do this time of year in the northern hemisphere except clean up your garden and make sure that any annual plants are pulled up and put in the composter so that you won't have to worry about any soil born diseases.

If you live in an area that has a lot of deciduous trees that lose their leaves in the fall, you might want to think about leaving them in your garden bed rather than raking them up.  They make a great winter mulch and protect perennials from snow and ice.  Be sure to rake them in the springtime, though, because these leaves can inhibit water from getting to the roots of your plants.

If you live in the southern hemisphere, you should be starting to see bulbs poke out of the ground and this is the time you will want to start hot weather vegetables from seed.

Well, that's about all for this month.  For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, please have a wonderful and safe holiday.  Thank you again for your patience in the late arrival of this issue.  My logjam at work has opened up and I look forward to a fun Thanksgiving with my family.

Yours for a more bountiful garden,

Victoria
The Frugal Garden Guru