The season’s changing, the days are noticeably becoming shorter and temperatures are dropping, but there’s still a chance to do some last sowings of winter salads and greens.
Think about ways of protecting crops over the winter, cloches, mini-tunnels and fleece are all useful ways of extending the season.
Autumn sown vegetables and plants will bloom a couple of weeks earlier than a spring sown seeds. Garlic and broad bean planted now will crop earlier the following spring and summer.
Sow Outside:
- Winter salads and greens including winter lettuce, oriental vegetables and spinach
- Broad beans and hardy (round seeded) peas to overwinter (from mid September)
- Radishes a fast crop so worth sowing to mature before the first frosts
- Hardy annual flowers for next spring, such as calendula, love-in-a-mist, cornflowers, poppies, California poppies
- Garlic (from October onwards)
Other Jobs:
October is a time to reap your rewards of your fruits and vegetables on your patch.
- Harvest squashes and pumpkins after they have changed colour – ‘cure’ them in a warm dry place for a couple of weeks to toughen the skin and increase storage life
- Mulch any gaps or around plants that will stay in the ground over winter with loose materials like woodchip, leaf mould or grass clippings to protect the soil and keep in moisture. Altermatively sow a green manure to overwinter.
- Last chance to save seed from some of your favourite flowers like cosmos, calendula or Californian poppy – dry them indoors and store in a labelled paper bag in a cool dry place
- Instead of clearing out the beds of spent vegetables completely, try cutting them off at the base and leaving the roots in the ground. Your soil will be grateful for the additional organic matter
- Preserve any veg gluts by pickling, fermenting, freezing and jarring
Finally:
Do an inventory of your seeds, asking what worked in your garden and what didn’t and what changes you might make for your 2026 crop plan