October is not a planting month the way May is, but the list is not empty in any zone. What belongs on it is decided almost entirely by one number, your average first fall frost, and that number moves by two and a half months between zone 3 and zone 10. In zones 3 through 6 the frost has arrived or is about to, so October planting means garlic, spring bulbs and cover crops: things that go in the ground now and do their work later. In zones 7 and 8 there is still a short seed window alongside all of that. In zones 9 and 10, October is the single best sowing month of the year.
The short version. Garlic goes in everywhere, from around your first frost through the following four weeks. Spring bulbs go in as soon as the soil has cooled and while you can still get a trowel into it. Cereal rye will still germinate on a bed cleared in late October in most of the country. And seed sowing for an actual harvest stops at the sow-by date for your zone, which is October 4 for radishes in zone 7a and October 25 for radishes in zone 8b, but has already passed for everything in zone 6 and colder.
Find your frost date first
Every date below counts backward or forward from your first frost, so start with yours rather than with the zone average.
Enter your US ZIP code for your USDA zone, frost dates & planting calendar.
What to plant in October, by zone
| Zone band | First frost | Still sow from seed | Transplant | Plant to overwinter | Finished for the year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 to 4 | Sep 15 to Sep 28 | Nothing outdoors for a harvest; greens in a cold frame only | Nothing outdoors | Garlic (3a Sep 15 to Oct 13, 4b Sep 28 to Oct 26), spring bulbs, rye | Every warm-season crop, and all fall crops from seed |
| 5 to 6 | Oct 3 to Oct 18 | Nothing outdoors for a harvest; a cold frame buys salad greens | Nothing outdoors | Garlic (5a Oct 3 to Oct 31, 6b from Oct 18), spring bulbs, rye | Warm-season crops, plus fall carrots, kale, peas, beets |
| 7 to 8 | Oct 25 to Nov 15 | Radishes (7a by Oct 4, 8b by Oct 25), spinach (7b by Oct 4, 8b by Oct 18) | Lettuce, kale, broccoli, cabbage, chard | Garlic (7a from Oct 25, 8a from Nov 8), onion sets, shallots, parsley | Fall carrots, fall peas, beets and cilantro from seed |
| 9 to 10 | Nov 30 to Dec 31 | Carrots (9a by Oct 5, 10a by Oct 25), lettuce, beets, kale, cilantro, peas | Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, chard, collards | Spinach (9a Oct 19 to Nov 2), onion sets, garlic from late November | Most warm-season crops outside a greenhouse |
| 11 and up | none | The whole cool-season list, October through January | Everything that bolts in heat | Garlic only from pre-chilled cloves; bulbs need refrigeration first | Nothing is frost-limited; heat is the limit instead |
Dates in the table are the last day you can sow and still expect a crop, calculated from the representative first frost for each zone using the arithmetic in the fall planting calendar by zone. Your own ZIP will run a week or two either side.
Zones 3 and 4: garlic, bulbs and rye
Your first frost is behind you and the ground will be frozen within weeks. Nothing sown outdoors in October reaches harvest size, and that is not a failure of planning, it is what a 123 day season in zone 3a means.
What October is genuinely for here is garlic. The window is September 15 to October 13 in zone 3a and September 28 to October 26 in zone 4b, and the second half of it is the better half, because cloves that go in late enough to root without pushing much top growth come through winter in better shape. Plant deep, three to four inches to the top of the clove, and mulch four to six inches with straw or shredded leaves. Frost heaving, not cold, is what kills garlic in these zones.
Spring bulbs go in through October and into early November if the soil is still workable. Daffodils, crocus and alliums are the reliable ones. Tulips are worth planting late here for the same reason garlic is: cold soil discourages top growth.
Then sow cereal rye over any bed you are done with. It germinates when the soil is too cold for almost anything else, holds the soil over winter, and is turned under or cut down in spring.
Zones 5 and 6: the garlic window opens
October is garlic month in the true sense in zone 5a, where the window runs October 3 to October 31, and in zone 6b it opens on October 18 and runs through mid November. This is the one crop where planting late in the window beats planting early.
Everything else for a harvest has closed. The last radish sowing in zone 6b was September 27, and carrots, kale, lettuce and peas all had August or early September deadlines. A cold frame or a low tunnel changes the arithmetic by roughly two weeks at each end, which in practice means salad greens sown in the first week of October under cover will give you cutting-size leaves rather than heads.
Spinach deserves a note here. Its purpose in fall is not to mature, it is to make a small rosette, stall through winter, and restart in late winter weeks before you could sow anything. The engine’s window for that is September 1 to September 15 in zone 6a, so an October sowing is past it. Under a cold frame it is still worth a packet of seed, because the downside is a packet of seed and the upside is spinach in March.
Bulbs and cover crops are the rest of the October list. Rye for anything cleared late, crimson clover only if you are at the warm end of zone 6 and the bed is clear in the first week of the month.
Zones 7 and 8: the last real seed window
This is the band where October still has sowing in it. Radishes are the fastest insurance crop in the garden and they have the latest deadline: October 4 in zone 7a, October 11 in zone 7b, October 18 in zone 8a and October 25 in zone 8b. Spinach for overwintering runs September 20 to October 4 in zone 7b, September 27 to October 11 in zone 8a, and October 4 to October 18 in zone 8b. Cilantro in zone 8b has until about October 1.
Transplants are the other move, and they are underrated. Buying lettuce, kale, broccoli, cabbage or chard as starts skips four to six weeks of the schedule, which is exactly the amount of time you are short by in mid October. A flat of broccoli transplants set out in the first half of the month in zone 8 heads up in cool weather instead of buttoning in heat.
Overwintering onions and shallots are worth the bed space in this band. Sets go in September 13 to October 4 in zone 7a, September 27 to October 18 in zone 8a, and October 4 to October 25 in zone 8b. They sit through winter and bulb up months ahead of a spring planting.
Garlic here comes later than most people expect: October 25 through late November in zone 7a, November 8 onward in zone 8a. If you plant it with the bulbs in early October in zone 8, you get a lot of green growth in December and a smaller head in July. The garlic guide by zone has the full window and the hardneck versus softneck decision, which also flips around zone 7.
Zones 9 and 10: October is the main event
Your first frost is November 30 or later, so October is not the end of anything. It is the sowing month for the cool season, and the crops you failed with in July because of heat are the ones that work now.
Carrots can be sown through about October 5 in zone 9a and October 25 in zone 10a. Lettuce runs to October 11 in 9a and October 31 in 10a. Beets to October 13 in 9a, kale to October 15, cilantro to October 16, peas to October 1, and radishes not until November 9. Spinach for overwintering goes in October 19 to November 2 in zone 9a.
The limiting factor in this band is not frost, it is soil temperature at sowing. Lettuce germinates badly in soil above the mid 80s, and early October in zone 9b can still deliver that. Shade the seedbed with a board or a scrap of shade cloth until the seed is up, water lightly twice a day rather than deeply once, or start the seed in flats somewhere cooler and transplant.
Garlic here is a December or January job from cloves that have been refrigerated for six to eight weeks, because the winter does not deliver enough sustained cold to trigger bulbing on its own. The same applies to tulips and hyacinths: buy them in October, chill them for roughly 10 to 12 weeks, and plant around the turn of the year.
Garlic, shallots and bulbs: what October is really for
Garlic, shallots and spring bulbs all follow the same principle: plant them cool, let them root, and let winter do the rest. Break garlic heads into cloves the day you plant, not before, and plant only the largest cloves, because clove size going in is the best predictor of head size coming out. Shallots are planted the same way and on the same schedule.
Bulbs want to go in once the soil has cooled and while there is still time for roots to form before the ground freezes hard. Depth is two to three times the height of the bulb, pointed end up, and the most common mistake is planting shallow. Daffodils and alliums come back for years. Tulips are usually best treated as a one-season display outside the cold zones.
Cover crops: the part most home gardeners skip
An empty bed over winter loses soil structure to rain, loses nitrogen to leaching, and grows weeds. A cover crop fixes all three for the price of a bag of seed.
Cereal rye is the one to reach for in October. It germinates in cold soil, makes a dense root mass, and can be sown later than anything else. Its only drawback is that it is vigorous in spring and needs to be cut down or turned under a few weeks before you plant into that bed.
Crimson clover and hairy vetch fix nitrogen, which rye does not, but they want roughly six weeks of growing weather before a hard freeze to establish. In zone 7 and warmer an early October sowing makes that. In zone 5 it usually does not, and the seed is wasted.
Oats winterkill in zone 6 and colder, which is a feature rather than a bug: they die back and leave a mat you can plant straight into in spring, with no spring termination work. They need to be in the ground early enough to make growth first, so October is late for them in the north.
Field peas and tillage radish are worth a mention and mostly belong to a September sowing.
What is finished everywhere
Anything a light frost kills is done for the season if you have a frost date at all. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, cucumbers, summer squash, corn and basil all have fall sow-by dates that passed in midsummer, because they need 83 to 103 days of clear runway before the frost. Pick the last of them ahead of the first predicted frost, bring green tomatoes indoors to ripen, and give the space to garlic or rye.
The other thing that is finished is the assumption that a warm week in late October means the season is back. Your frost date is a 50 percent probability, which means half of all years are earlier than it. Plant the things that want winter, protect the things that do not, and check your own date against the zone averages on the frost dates page. When the month turns, the November planting list by zone picks up where this one ends.