What to plant in October (UK)

By Sophie Sparkes · Updated August 2026 · 8 min read

October is garlic month. It's also your last comfortable window for overwintering onions, the classic time to start sweet peas, and the point where next year's garden really gets decided. The soil is still warm from summer but the air has cooled — which is exactly the combination roots like.

Short answer: it is absolutely not too late. October isn't the end of the growing year, it's one of the most productive planting months in the UK calendar. What you put in now needs almost nothing from you over winter and crops months earlier than anything you sow in spring.

🧄 Garlic — October's headline act

If you plant one thing this month, plant garlic. It's the single best value crop for a beginner: it goes in now, asks for essentially nothing all winter, and comes out in July as something you'd have paid a lot for at a farm shop.

Garlic doesn't just tolerate autumn planting, it requires it. Most varieties need 4–6 weeks below about 10°C to break dormancy and split into fat, separate cloves. Plant in spring instead and you'll very often harvest a single undivided "round" — edible, but not what you wanted.

Choosing a variety (and why not the supermarket)

Buy seed garlic from a nursery or garden centre rather than planting a supermarket bulb. Shop garlic is usually grown in a much warmer country, isn't suited to our day length, and can carry diseases you don't want in your soil.

You'll see two types. Softneck varieties like 'Solent Wight' store the longest — often into the following spring — and suit milder southern gardens. Hardneck varieties like 'Carcassonne Wight' cope better with cold and give you scapes to eat in early summer, but don't keep as long. If you want garlic to last, plant softneck. If you garden somewhere cold and exposed, plant hardneck. Plant a few of each in your first year and see which does better for you.

How to plant it

Split the bulb into individual cloves just before planting, leaving the papery skin on, and keep the fattest ones — clove size going in largely determines bulb size coming out. Plant each clove pointy-end-up, about 5cm deep, 15cm apart, with 30cm between rows, in your sunniest, best-drained spot.

If your soil is heavy clay or sits wet over winter, don't fight it: start the cloves in modules in a cold frame and plant them out in early spring once they've rooted. Garlic will forgive cold far more readily than it forgives waterlogging.

Veg to plant in October

🫛 Broad beans

Sow a hardy variety like 'Aquadulce Claudia' directly into the ground from late October. The plants overwinter small and tough, then race away in spring — cropping up to a month before spring sowings, and usually before the blackfly wakes up.

🌱 Overwintering peas

Round-seeded varieties such as 'Douce Provence' or 'Meteor' can go in now in milder areas for an early-summer crop. Give them cloche protection and something to scramble up, and expect losses to mice — sow a few more than you need.

🧅 Onion sets — last call

If you didn't plant autumn onion sets in September, early October is your last good window. After that they don't root well enough before the cold to be worth the space. Japanese overwintering varieties are the ones to look for.

🥬 Winter lettuce and salad leaves

Sow winter-hardy lettuce, mizuna, land cress and corn salad in a cold frame, greenhouse border, or under a cloche. Growth slows right down in the depths of winter, but you'll be cutting leaves months before any spring sowing.

🍃 Spring cabbage plants

Too late to sow, but not too late to plant. Young spring cabbage plants set out now will sit through winter and give you spring greens in April, exactly when there's nothing else to pick.

🌿 Rhubarb crowns

Autumn is the right time to plant a rhubarb crown, while the soil is still warm enough for it to settle in. Pick a spot you're happy to leave alone — a good crown will crop for a decade or more. Resist pulling any stems at all in its first year.

Flowers to plant in October

• Sweet peas — the traditional October job. Sow in deep pots or root trainers, overwinter somewhere cool and bright (a cold frame is perfect), and you'll have strong, early-flowering plants that shrug off spring cold.
• Daffodils, crocuses & alliums — still fine to plant right through October if September got away from you. Daffodils in particular are more forgiving than the packet suggests.
• Tulips — buy them now while the good varieties are in stock, but hold off planting until November. Colder soil means far less tulip fire disease.
• Hardy annuals — early October is the cut-off for direct-sown cornflowers, calendula and nigella in milder areas. Sown now they overwinter as small plants and flower weeks earlier than spring sowings.
• Wallflowers & violas — plant out now for colour from late winter onwards.

Get ready for bare-root season

From next month, nurseries start selling trees, roses, hedging and fruit bushes "bare-root" — dormant, potless, and roughly half the price of container plants. October is the time to choose what you want and order it: the best varieties sell out before November. If you're planning a fruit corner, raspberry canes, currants and gooseberries are the easiest wins.

October planting questions

Is it too late to plant vegetables in October?

No. Garlic, broad beans, overwintering peas, winter salads, spring cabbage plants and the last autumn onion sets all want to go in this month. What has passed is the window for anything needing a long warm run to ripen — courgettes, beans, sweetcorn and tomatoes are finished for the year. October planting is about next year's harvest, not this one.

What vegetables can I plant in October in the UK?

Garlic (the main one), broad beans, round-seeded overwintering peas, autumn onion sets and shallots in the first half of the month, winter-hardy lettuce and salad leaves under cover, spring cabbage plants, and rhubarb crowns. You can also sow green manure on any bed you've cleared, to hold nutrients and keep the weeds down over winter.

When exactly should I plant garlic in the UK?

October is the main month for most of the country, and mid-to-late October is the sweet spot: late enough that the cloves won't put on soft top growth before winter, early enough that they root before the ground turns cold. In a cold northern or exposed garden, the last week of September works too. In the mild south west you can leave it into early November without much penalty. What you shouldn't do is delay into midwinter, when waterlogged soil rots cloves faster than frost ever hurts them.

Can I still plant bulbs in October?

Yes for almost everything — daffodils, crocuses, alliums, snowdrops and hyacinths are all fine to plant through October. Tulips are the deliberate exception: wait for November, when colder soil reduces the risk of tulip fire. See our guide to planting spring bulbs for the timings side by side.

Is October too late to sow grass seed?

Early October is usually still fine in most of the UK — the soil holds enough summer warmth for seed to germinate before growth stops. By the end of the month it's genuinely too cold in most areas, and seed will simply sit there feeding the birds. If you've missed it, wait for spring rather than wasting a bag.

What should I do with beds I've finished with?

Don't leave bare soil over winter. Either sow a green manure like field beans or grazing rye, or cover the bed with cardboard or a thick mulch of compost. Both protect the soil structure from winter rain and save you a lot of weeding in March.