What to sow and plant in October

These are the jobs that come round in October for a garden in the middle of England. If you garden in Cornwall you are roughly a fortnight ahead of this list; in the Highlands you are up to ten weeks behind it, and following a national calendar is how seedlings get killed by a frost that was always going to come.

October is the month the garden stops being about this year and starts being about next. Most of the sowing is finished, but the planting that decides your first harvests of next summer — garlic, overwintering onions, autumn broad beans — happens now, in a fairly narrow window. The other half of the month is the tidying that pays you back: lifting the tender things before they are caught, and getting leaves and bare soil sorted before the weather closes in.

Plant now for next year

These are the October jobs with the longest payback. All of them go in now and are harvested next spring or summer.

Garlic

Plant cloves from mid-autumn to early winter. Garlic needs a cold period to form bulbs at all — most varieties want one to two months at 0–10°C — which is why it goes in before winter rather than in spring (RHS). Autumn-planted garlic is lifted from late spring to early summer.

Choose a variety bred for autumn planting: ‘Vallelado’ suits autumn and early winter, while ‘Flavour’ is one to hold back for late winter or early spring (Garden Organic). Elephant garlic is best planted in October specifically, as it needs a long season to bulb up.

Overwintering onion sets

Finish planting autumn sets this month for a crop in early to mid-summer next year (RHS) — several weeks ahead of spring-planted sets. ‘Radar’ and ‘Electric Red’ are common autumn choices (Garden Organic). These are bred to be less sensitive to cold, which is what stops them bolting after a winter in the ground (RHS onions).

Note that Plot’s onion sets guide models the usual spring-planted crop, so its dates are the spring ones.

Autumn-sown broad beans

Sow in situ towards the end of October, but only in mild areas (RHS, Garden Organic). Somewhere colder, cover the row with cloches or biodegradable fleece for insulation and to keep pigeons off. Use a hardy variety bred for it — ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ AGM and ‘Super Aquadulce’ are the standard autumn choices, and ‘The Sutton’ does well under cloches. An autumn sowing on a sheltered, well-drained site can crop as early as May (RHS broad beans).

Overwintering peas work the same way and in mild areas only: sow a hardy round-seeded variety such as ‘Douce Provence’, ‘Meteor’ or ‘Pilot’ (RHS, Garden Organic).

If your soil is heavy or lies wet

Waterlogged winter soil rots autumn-planted garlic and onion sets before they ever root, and damp ground rots broad bean seed. On heavy land, start garlic cloves in modules in autumn and plant out in spring, and do the same with onion sets — one set per module in peat-free compost, kept somewhere cool and bright such as an unheated greenhouse or a well-ventilated cold frame (RHS garlic, RHS onions). Leave the beans until spring.

Hardy winter salads

There is still a sowing window for the genuinely hardy leaves, and most crop more generously under cover (Garden Organic):

Land cress — a good substitute for watercress, hardy enough to survive most winters.
Lamb’s lettuce (corn salad) — soft, mild and lasts well right through winter.
Winter lettuce — ‘Rouge d’Hiver’, ‘Winter Density’ or ‘Winter Crop’, for November and December picking or to overwinter for early spring.
Winter purslane (claytonia) — sow into an unheated greenhouse or polytunnel this month.
Oriental greens — pak choi, mizuna, mibuna, komatsuna and giant red mustard, for salad or stir-fry leaves. Most do better with some protection.

Hardy spinach sown in late summer or early autumn will crop through autumn and again in early spring. From October, cover it with cloches or fleece unless your local climate is genuinely mild, or move container-grown plants into a greenhouse or cold frame (RHS spinach).

If a bed is simply empty, sow a green manure instead: winter field beans and grazing rye protect and improve the soil over winter, and Italian ryegrass can still go in this month in milder areas (RHS).

The full lists for this month

These are drawn from Plot’s plant guides. They are the national version — the planner shifts every date to your postcode area’s growing zone.

Sow indoors or under cover

Nothing on the list this month.

Sow outdoors

Coriander

Ready to harvest

Plant

Vegetables and fruit to plant out

Garlic

Trees, shrubs, bulbs and perennials

Prune

Peony (Herbaceous)

Other October jobs

Alongside the planting, this is the month for the work that protects next season (RHS grow your own, RHS advice for October):

Get tender plants under cover before the first frost reaches you — which, in the Highlands and Islands, can be late September, and in the Channel Islands not until well into November.
Plant out spring cabbages sown in July or August, then net them against pigeons with the netting pulled taut so birds cannot get tangled. They go out at 10–15 cm tall with five or six true leaves, and get thinned again in late February or March (RHS cabbages).
Plant pot-grown fruit — October is a good month for it. Order bare-root stock now for winter planting, and prepare ground for new trees, canes and bushes.
Ripen the last tomatoes by digging up outdoor plants and hanging them upside down in a greenhouse; anything still green goes into chutney.
Divide herbaceous perennials and lift and divide rhubarb crowns while the soil still holds warmth.
Take hardwood cuttings of black, red and whitecurrants, and dig up rooted layers of blackberries and hybrid berries.
Harvest apples, pears, grapes, nuts and cranberries as they ripen. Jerusalem artichokes lift more easily after frost, once the stems have been cut down to about 8 cm stubs to mark the row.
Prune climbing roses once they have finished flowering, and cut back perennials that have died down — though leaving some hollow stems standing over winter is better for insects.
Collect fallen leaves for leaf mould rather than binning them.
Lay turf or renovate lawns, and take the last mow and hedge trim of the year if you are somewhere mild.

How much October shifts where you live

The table below is the annual picture for each growing zone, not a figure for this month alone: the last and first frost weeks are long-term regional averages, and the growing season is the gap between them. They are planning estimates built from Met Office regional averages and the RHS frost map — useful for choosing which week to plant, and not a forecast for your own garden. A frost pocket at the bottom of the plot, a south-facing wall or a city centre will all beat the zone. In the app, the ten-day forecast and frost alerts use your full postcode; these planning dates stay regional.

Where you are	Average last frost	Average first frost	Growing season
South West Coast and Cornwall	late March	early December	260 days
South Coast and Channel	late March	late November	240 days
Greater London (Urban Heat Island)	late March	late November	250 days
South East and Home Counties	mid April	early November	215 days
East Anglia	mid April	late October	195 days
Midlands and Lowland Wales	late April	late October	190 days
Wales and West Coast	mid April	mid November	210 days
Northern England	early May	late October	175 days
Scotland Lowlands and Central Belt	early May	mid October	165 days
Scotland Highlands and Islands	late May	late September	120 days
Northern Ireland	mid April	early November	205 days
Channel Islands and Isle of Man	mid March	early December	250 days

October jobs cross-checked against RHS grow your own: October, RHS advice for October and Garden Organic: what to sow and plant in October, with crop timings from RHS garlic, RHS onions, RHS broad beans, RHS spinach and RHS cabbages. Regional frost dates are long-term averages, not forecasts for your garden.