Maximize Your Winter Harvest with Hardy Vegetables that Mature Next Spring!
Continue to sow vegetables for overwintering, to mature next spring, such as kale, turnip, spinach, winter lettuce, Oriental vegetables (Pak Choi, Mizuna, and Mustard). Plant overwintering onion sets.
Under cover – greenhouse/ cold frame/ cloches
If your garden is not blasted by gales, covering your green leaf crops such as salad leaves, spinach, pak choi with cloches can extend their season and protect from heavy rain.
Sow spring cabbages, such as 'April' and 'Durham Early' into modules in the greenhouse.
Surface-sow euphorbia and dierama seeds now in trays indoors. Keep in a cool greenhouse over winter.
In pots now sow calendula officinalis, viola hybrida lupins, Aquilegia x hybrida, verbascum x hybrida, helenium puberulum, perennial salvias, aconitum and hollyhocks in a cold frame now. to plant out in the spring.
Direct sow outdoors
Sow green manure in empty spaces now to help improve your soil structure and prevent weeds establishing over winter.Make last sowings of salad leaves and radish now for quick crops, together with winter lettuce, land cress and corn salad (lambs lettuce) for picking throughout autumn and into winter. Sow Oriental greens, 'Perpetual' spinach, winter-hardy spring onions, such as 'White Lisbon' and turnips.
Sow directly in the ground now where you'd like it to flower. Autumn sowings produce bigger, more robust plants. Some to try sowing direct are hardy geraniums, Ammi majus, larkspur and delphiniums, hardy annuals, such as nigella, cornflowers, poached egg plant, annual and California poppies.