Plant These 10 AWESOME Crops In October RIGHT NOW!

In this video, I share the best vegetables to plant in October. October is the bridge between fall gardening season and winter gardening season, and now is the perfect time to start seeds for cold hardy crops that thrive in frost, freeze and cold weather. These easy to grow, cold hardy vegetables will produce big harvests from late fall throughout winter and into the new year. Plant these 10 awesome crops in October right now!

Don’t stop planting seeds when summer ends. Growing a fall garden and growing a winter garden is fun and rewarding. Investing a little work now will pay you back with huge harvests all year!

How To Build A PVC Hoop House: https://youtu.be/81ri2YEBNZc?si=L_VK5DeRhn7NHQWo
How To Grow Sweeter Carrots: https://youtu.be/1pf6k-ssgH8?si=4mNsEcklDAbRQ7qw
More Vegetables To Grow In October: https://youtu.be/dFzh4EvGrbk?si=Uw4wDcZSP26zfOk6

Seeds featured in this video can be purchased** here:
Southern Giant Curled Mustard Greens: https://amzn.to/3JtniOl
Georgia Southern Collards: https://amzn.to/3UGc23t
Nantes Carrots: https://amzn.to/45OpS93
Tendersweet Carrots: https://amzn.to/3VhVa3a
Cherry Belle Radishes: https://amzn.to/4mZMDhf
Detroit Dark Red Beets: https://amzn.to/3Kj6Yjx
Rainbow Swiss Chard: https://amzn.to/46kbIhu
Giant Caesar Romaine: https://amzn.to/3HMIVsl
New Red Fire Lettuce: https://www.pjatr.com/t/8-12781-345111-269073?url=https%3A%2F%2Fterritorialseed.com%2Fproducts%2Flettuce-new-red-fire
Rouge d’Hiver Lettuce: https://amzn.to/47JfKRl
Marvel of Four Seasons Lettuce: https://amzn.to/45vXGsG
Texas Early Grano Onion: https://amzn.to/41oZEbL
Short Day Onion Seed Collection: https://amzn.to/46ARqyS
Tokyo Long White Bunching Onion: https://amzn.to/4n1RRch
American Flag Leek: https://amzn.to/4nP72pD
Giant Musselburgh Leek: https://www.pntra.com/t/8-12781-345111-269073?url=https%3A%2F%2Fterritorialseed.com%2Fproducts%2Fleek-giant-musselburgh
Bok Choy: https://amzn.to/4gHp4rB

These products* can help make gardening in October easier and more productive:
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 When To Plant Seeds In October
2:08 October Crop 1: Mustard Greens
4:04 October Crop 2: Collard Greens
5:44 October Crops 3-4: Carrots & Radishes
8:31 October Crops 5-6: Beets & Swiss Chard
11:37 October Crop 7: Cool Season Lettuces
14:12 October Crops 8-9: Onions & Leeks
17:52 October Crop 10: Bok Choy
19:41 What About Garlic?
21:34 More October Gardening Tips
23:22 Adventures With Dale

If you are looking for crops to sow in October for maximum harvests, want to learn about growing fruit trees or want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden guides and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #vegetablegardening #vegetablegarden

What’s growing on gardeners? October is finally here. It’s cooling down everywhere and gardening is about to get a whole lot easier. And we are going to celebrate that by growing the best and most productive fall and winter gardens of our lives. On today’s video, I’m going to share with you 10 awesome veggies that you can plant in October. Right now, these are, in my opinion, the most essential and easiest to grow veggies that you can plant this time of year. If you’re new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. Over the course of this video, I will be mentioning several different named varieties of vegetables that I love growing that have proven to do very well for me over the years. If you are interested in those exact varieties for your convenience, I will place links down in the video description to some places that sell that seed. As a point of reference, I live on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, zone 8b, just outside of the Wilmington, North Carolina area. But for the record, hardiness zones do not matter when planting an annual vegetable garden. All that matters when planting an annual vegetable garden are your frost dates and your average temperatures. But everything I am listing in this video is very frost and freeze tolerant. So even the frost dates don’t really matter. You can grow pretty much all these things no matter where you live for the most part. But you can also give yourself a ton of flexibility by simply building one of these cheap little PVC hoop structures. If it’s still a little hot where you live, you can give your plants a head start by installing one of these combination insect netting shade cloths over them. Or if it’s a little bit chilly your way, you can finish them under agricultural fabric. So, instead of using this shade netting, you can use agricultural fabric row covers instead. I’ll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show you how to easily and cheaply build one of these PVC hoop houses. And I’ll also place links down in the video description for things like shade cloth, shade netting, agricultural fabric row covers, things like that to help you out. Awesome crop number one I recommend everyone plant in October has become one of my favorite if not my favorite leafy greens of all time and that is mustard greens. Since moving to the south I have absolutely fallen in love with mustard greens. They are cold hearty. They are disease resistant. They are really easy to grow and they are a delicious stewing and stir fry and sautéing green. Nice and peppery. fantastic flavor and my favorite variety to grow has become southern giant. Now, what I love about this mustard green is it grows absolutely enormous leaves and it grows very quickly. One of the challenges to growing a fall and winter garden is the sun. The sun gets very weak and the days get very short. So, plants can struggle to grow because of a lack of photosynthesis. So even if you’re growing very coldresistant varieties, they may grow very slowly. And that’s what is so great about this variety right here. The leaves are so big and they grow so quickly that even in places that have very short days and weak sun, you can still get great growth on these varieties. In the dead of December and January, this performs very well for me and grows absolutely enormous leaves and quickly. I’ve had no issues growing mustard greens out in my garden down to 20° Fahrenheit. They can take a very hard frost. But if you cover them, they will take even colder temperatures. When we got a couple of nights in the 18 to 19° range and we got hit by an ice storm, I simply threw a wash basket over my my mustard greens and they took no damage at all with that little roof over them to give them a little bit of frost protection. So again, I highly recommend you build something like one of these PVC hoop houses. You put an agricultural fabric over them and then you can grow something like mustard greens deep into the teens. Awesome crop number two that everybody should plant in October is another leafy green that I have fallen in love with since moving to the south and that is collard greens. Collards are a brasa. So they are closely related to broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and the like. However, did you know that collarded greens are the most cold hearty of all the brassasica greens, even more cold hearty than kale? Yes, it’s true. Collarded greens can take anywhere from 0 to 10° F uncovered. They will probably take a little bit of damage, but they will recover when it warms up a little bit above that. Now, if you run an agricultural fabric above them, they can possibly take temperatures below zero by simply keeping the hard frost off of the leaves. So, this is, in my opinion, a mustrow in your fall and winter garden. And again, what’s really great about collard greens is the fast growing nature. So, if you have short days and weak sun and a lot of things struggle to grow, you will still get some leafy growth on your collard greens because they grow so quickly. And because they make big leaves, you can just harvest them in a cut and come again fashion where you go outside, you peel off a few leaves and then you leave the central stems and then you give them a little bit bit of blood meal or fish emulsion or some other nitrogen-based fertilizer and they will regenerate and they will keep growing more and more leaves. So the fast growing cold hearty nature of collard greens make these a mustrow in your late fall and winter garden. And as a bonus, they taste better in the cold weather. So the more cold these collards get exposed to, the sweeter they tend to get. Crops three and four that you must plant in October are two of my favorite root vegetables, and they are carrots and radishes. In my opinion, no late fall and winter garden is complete without both because they just excel so well in cold temperatures. Carrots are easily one of the most cold hearty things we can grow in our fall and winter gardens. The carrots you see right here are easily cold hearty to 0 to 10° Fahrenheit uncovered and they will tolerate temperatures below zero if you put an agricultural fabric or some other type of cover on top of them during the extreme cold. Carrot sweetness is inversely proportional to temperature. That means the cooler the temperature is that the carrots mature in, the higher the proportion of sugar to starch. Carrots that mature in the heat of the summer generally are very starchy and fibrous and they don’t taste all that good. But carrots that mature in the late fall, early to mid- winter will be the sweetest, most delicious carrots you’ve ever had because they just consolidate lots and lots of sugars in the cold. I made a video all about this. If you want to learn how to grow the sweetest carrots that you’ve ever tasted, I’ll link to a video both above and down in the video description. You have to watch that if you want to grow the best tasting carrots. The reasons to grow radishes are a little bit different. These radishes that you see right here, well, they’re not nearly as cold hearty as carrots unprotected. Radishes will take temperatures of about 20 to 25° unprotected. But if they get exposed to too much cold, the bulbs can split on you. So, if you’re going to see temperatures below 20 to 25, I strongly recommend covering them. A little bit of protection goes a long way. But the things that make radishes so incredible is how fast they grow. A lot of us struggle with the weak sun and the short days of winter and things truck along at a very slow pace. But not radishes. From the day you sew that seed, most varieties of radishes will be ready for harvest in only about 30 days. And they produce big sweet bulbs this time of year. So I strongly recommend that you continuously and successively plant your radishes throughout the winter. You see, I really don’t have a need for a huge bed of radishes, but you just take your finger and you poke a couple holes in the ground and you can sew 6 to 12 new radish seeds continuously throughout the fall and the winter into spring. That way, you can have a non-stop harvest of radishes in your garden. If you love growing cold hearty root vegetables and you’re looking for some new and more interesting things that you can plant out, you can consider also growing parsnips, rudabggas, and turnipss. They all grow very easily and they’re cold hearty to about 20 degrees or colder as well if you cover them with an agricultural fabric. Awesome crops five and six that you should plant out in your garden in October are beets and Swiss chard. They are both very closely related. They are actually both part of the amaranth family. However, despite their close relation, we grow them for entirely different reasons. Beets are primarily grown for the bulbs. And just like carrots, when we sew beets that mature in the winter, they are extra sweet. Beets that mature in the summer tend to be starchier and more fibrous. But when we grow beetroots in the winter time, they tend to have a higher level of sugar, especially when they are kissed by frost. Some cold nights do a lot of good for them. Now, it is possible that you can grow beets for the greenery as well. Perhaps you’ve heard of people eating beet greens. Well, they are edible, but I’m not a huge fan of growing beets for the greenery because the fertilizing process is very different. If you want to grow beets for the greenery, it’s best to give your beets a lot of nitrogen. That way, they grow nice big greens. But if you do that, you’re going to suffer with root development because the plant is going to put more of its energy into growing greens than growing roots. Therefore, I recommend that you primarily grow your beets in the wintertime for the root because they are nice and sweet and extra tender. And of course, once you harvest your beets, you can always eat the greenery as well. However, if the greenery is primarily what you are after, I recommend you grow Swiss chard. That’s because Swiss chard makes greens almost identical to beets, except in my opinion, they taste better and they are much, much larger. That’s because Swiss chard doesn’t produce a bulbing root like the beet does. They produce a taproot and they put much more of their energy into growing those leafy greens. So, if the greenery is what you’re after, Swiss chard is what you want to plant. Now, beets are cold hearty till about the 20 to 25° Fahrenheit range before I find the greenery starts taking some damage. But again, you can go into the teens if you run a row cover on top of them. Swiss chard I have found to be more cold hearty than beets. It can really take punishing cold down into the teens, even colder, with a row cover on top of them. Now, the awesome thing about Swiss chard is it can grow perennially for several years. I’ve had Swiss chard plants that are a couple of years old. However, here in the deep south, they tend to get more beat up in the summer heat and destroyed by worms and caterpillars. So, they usually don’t make it past a year or two where I live. But you can grow them for many years if you live in a more forgiving climate without as many worms and caterpillars. So for that reason, I recommend everybody grow both beets and chard in their fall and winter gardens. However, I will warn you, do not plant them next to each other like I did a couple of years ago, or else you will get them confused because the greenery will look identical and you will get the plants completely confused until the bulbs of the beets start to actually produce bulbs. Crop number seven everybody should be planting in October right now are cool season lettucees. Did you know that lettucees both come in cool season varieties and warm season varieties? It’s true. A lot of your Roma, specifically your large-headed green Roma are warm season lettucees. They can take temperatures in the 80s just fine, but as much as a light frost or freeze could actually cause browning of the tips, and a hard frost could cause a lot of damage or even kill the plants. So, for that reason, I actually grow my Roma lettucees in the warmer season. And I try to harvest them before the frosts begin. If you live in zone 9 or warmer or you have a greenhouse or a way of keeping frost off your plants and you love growing Roma, my favorite variety of Roma is Giant Caesar. It produces huge delicious heads. I just love this variety of lettuce for the warm season. But if you’re like me and hard frost and freezes are going to start kicking in big time in November and December, you’re going to want to start switching to the cool season lettucees in your garden. And in my experience, the most cold tolerant lettucees tend to be the ruffled leaf red lettucees. They can really take some punishment. My favorite varieties that I have found so far are New Red Fire, Red Sails, Marvel of Four Seasons, and Rouge Diver. I have had incredible success with all of these varieties of lettuce in my yard and garden all throughout the winter. All of these I’ve had success growing down to 15 degrees Fahrenheit with a row cover run on top of them to keep the hard frost off the leaves. In fact, this new red fire variety right here, I had an ice storm last year and this sat in the ice and the teens at night just fine without any damage at all. Now, if you like larger heading lettucees, this rouver variety right here is technically a red Roma. However, it doesn’t produce heads as big as what you’re used to at the grocery store, but it can still fill the void if you want something that heads for you this time of year. Your Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce is also a lettuce that can produce a pretty decent sized head if you give it one square foot to grow in. And all of these can also be sewn in rows in a cut and come again fashion where you come out with a pair of scissors and you snip back some of the row and then you hit them with some fish fertilizer or some blood meal or something else rich in nitrogen and then let them regrow and then cut and come again. Crops eight and nine that you should plant now in October are onions and leaks. And when it comes to onions, we can talk both about bunching onions and bulbing onions. What you choose there is going to be dependent on your climate. If you live in zone 7 or warmer, it is possible that you can grow bulbing onions all throughout the winter. However, the thing about bulbing onions is it requires a longer day length in order for them to produce the bulbs. Now, I ran an experiment last year where I grew short day onion varieties from the fall throughout the winter and I was able to harvest them in late winter, early spring and get bulbs about 2/3 to 3/4 the size of what I would get in my summer. So, I was very happy with the performance and they sat in the ice and snow just fine. Maybe you can even grow these down to zone six with a row cover on top of them. I’m not really sure, but you can experiment because onion seeds are cheap. Now, I will tell you that it is very important that you get yourself a short day variety of onion to have any chance of them bulbing at all in the off season because onion bulbs are formed by the long duration of the day. So, if you live in a higher latitude and you’re used to growing intermediate or long day onions in the summer, you’re going to have to try a short day onion in the winter. Here where I live in North Carolina, I grow short day onions year round and they turn out pretty well because we’re at 34 degrees latitude. If your climate is too cold to grow a bulbing onion or your days are too short, you can also grow a bunching onion. Now, bunching onions do not form bulbs. We harvest them for the greenery and we harvest them as spring onions or green onions. This variety right here, Tokyo Long White. This can take temperatures down to zero degrees Fahrenheit, maybe colder with a row cover on top of them. They can sit in snow pack pretty much indefinitely. And then you can just come outside with your scissors and snip off the greens. If your winters are so incredibly cold, it actually kills the greenery back. The roots may actually survive and respout in late winter, early spring when temperatures start to warm up and your soil gets warm again. That is how incredibly cold hearty your aliiums are. Leaks are even more cold hearty than your bunching onions. Leaks can stand in sub-zero temperatures all winter long. Uh there are generally speaking two types of leaks. There are your allpurpose leaks which are both fairly cold tolerant and fairly heat tolerant. Something like an American flag or a King Richard leak. You can grow that in zone 7 or warmer year round, 365 days a year like I’m growing right here. If you live in a colder zone, zone 6, zone 5, zone 4, you can grow a winter standing leak like Bandit or Blueise or Giant Muscle or Oslo or lots of other super cold hearty leaks. And if you plant them early enough in the fall, so they get to a fairly mature size like you see right here, they can sit indefinitely in snowpack. That is how incredibly cold hearty leaks are. They’re also super easy to grow. They have very little demand for fertilizer. They have pretty much no pests. I’ve never had an issue with disease and I live in a very diseaseprone climate. I’ve never had anything but fantastic results growing leaks. and they produce this wonderful delicious stem right here. That is what we want to actually harvest and eat. This is the best part. You can also use the greens to flavor soups and stews and things like that. And awesome crop number 10 that you should plant in October right now is a crop that I was reluctant to grow until I saw the results in my garden last year and they absolutely blew me away and that is bok choy. I grew bok choy in this very raised garden bed right here with an agricultural fabric over it all throughout last winter. Now, I’ve been reluctant to grow bok choy because I’ve seen information on the internet that says it’s only cold hearty to around 25 to 30° F. Absolute nonsense. I ran an agricultural fabric over these PVC hoops right here. We got hit by an ice storm. We had five nights in the teens and the bok choy underneath took absolutely no damage at all. It was one of the easiest things I have ever grown over the winter. And what was amazing about the bok choy was the speed that it grew at. We have issues growing things in our winter garden because of the weak sun and the short days, but this grew even in the low photosynthesis environment. This grew just as easily, if not easier, than the mustard greens, and it formed huge heads, and I was able to continually harvest them at my convenience throughout the winter. So, I strongly recommend try growing bok choy. I made so many delicious soups and stews all throughout the winter, and we had the coldest winter I’ve ever experienced in the eight years I’ve lived in southeastern North Carolina last winter, and it flew through. So, I really enjoyed these and I can’t wait to grow it again because it was so much fun and so easy to grow. If you’re not familiar with bok choy, please give it a try. It is so awesome. I think it will become one of your favorite winter greens. Some of you watching this video may be like, “Dude, where’s the garlic?” Well, here where I live in southeastern North Carolina, it is still way too early to plant our garlic. If I were to plant my garlic cloves in my garden in October, they would sprout immediately within 2 to 3 weeks, maybe even sooner. And that is generally not what we want. We want the garlic to sit in the ground and accumulate as much chill over the winter as possible. So for me, I don’t plant my garlic until around Thanksgiving, mid to late November. So I will be including garlic in my November planting list. It’s one of my favorite things to plant that time of year. However, now is actually a good time to buy your garlic, put it in a brown paper bag, and store it in your vegetable crisper in your refrigerator in order to help verilize the garlic. Meaning adding chill hours to it at around 40° Fahrenheit. Just if you choose to do this, you have to make sure you put it in a brown paper bag because the bag has to be able to breathe. If you put it in a plastic bag, it’s going to hold all the moisture in and your garlic heads are going to rot. This refrigerator cold vertalization is how I grow hard neck garlic here in zone 8b where our winters are very inconsistent. If I put it in the refrigerator for 6 to 8 weeks and get that consistent chill on it, that will guarantee me that I get really nice heads of garlic, even if we have a very mild winter. doing this trick, you could grow hard neck garlic down in Miami as long as you stick it in your refrigerator for uh at least 8 to 10 weeks. Put a lot of chill on it. So, now’s a good time to get your garlic if you need cold vertalization before you plant it. Stick it in a brown paper bag in the fridge. Accumulate the chill now. In fact, I’m going to do that this week to get a jump start on the season so I can plant it in November. And that right there are 10 awesome crops that you can plant in October right now. These are my 10 favorite crops to plant out in my garden this time of year. So, if you are new to fall and winter gardening, or if you’re looking for the easiest and the most common and best things to grow, I think you should start with this list. That being said, if you’re looking for more things that you can plant, I actually made a super detailed list last year, 35 different crops you can plant in October. I’ll link to that video both above and down in the video description if you want a more comprehensive list that sacrifices a little bit of detail. That being said, for the 10 crops I did feature in this video, I will place links to all of the seeds down in the video description below for your convenience if you want to try some of my favorite varieties that have proven to grow really well here in the Carolinas in my winters. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring this notification bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these and share it with your family and friends to increase its reach. Spread it to as many people as possible to try and convince as many people to begin fall and winter gardening. If you are curious about any of the products that I use in real life in my vegetable garden that help me grow my fall and winter garden, I place direct links to my favorite things down in the video description. And everything I use is included in my Amazon storefront. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, you’ll see a comprehensive list of every single thing I use. And while you’re down there, please consider checking out my spreadshop for custom merch if you want to support my channel. I just created a whole bunch of new custom homemade designs. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Hey Dale, I have something to tell you. Dale, mommy says hi. [Music] Hey Dale, mommy wanted me to tell you that she says hi. All right, we’re going to do our hungries. Okay, you ready for your hungries? Are you ready for breakfast? Are you ready for breakfast? We’re going to make your breakfast. You’re very talkative this morning. Okay, he’s very hungry.