17 Container Vegetables You'll DEEPLY Regret Not Planting in October

Everything in this video, and the other eleven months for your zone, is in The Potted Patio Planting Calendar 👇 https://thepottedpatiobook.com The man who rents the flat below me carries his pots into the shed on the first cold weekend of October. Stacks them upside down against the mower, shuts the door, and that is the garden finished until April. He is careful about it. He washes them first. He thinks he is doing the right thing by them. His shed is full of dry terracotta from October to April. Mine had shallots splitting underground in January. He is not a worse gardener than me. He just believes the thing almost everybody believes, which is that October is the month you put the garden to bed. October is not the end of the growing year. It is the month you plant the food that feeds you in winter and in the first weeks of spring, when the shops charge the most for the least. Here is the part nobody says out loud. Some crops are not slow in October. They are simply working somewhere you cannot see. A shallot pushed into compost this month makes roots all through the cold, sits out the winter doing apparently nothing, and then splits into a cluster the moment the light comes back. One bulb in. A handful out. Nothing you do in spring produces that. But there is a deadline, and it is real. Roots need warm soil to settle into. The soil holds summer heat for weeks after the air lets go of it, and that window is what you are planting into. Miss it and you are not planting late, you are planting for nothing. Three of these cost you a full year if you miss this month. There is no second window and no spring version that works. One of them turns a single bulb into a whole handful, and I am not naming it here. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN 17 crops that go into a pot in October, counted down Four you can start on a windowsill tonight, in any zone, with no outdoor space at all The three that cost you a whole year if you skip this month Why garlic has three completely different planting windows depending on your zone The one root you should always grow in a pot and never in the ground A salad green that survives hard frost and snow and comes out the other side still green How to grow pea shoots from a bag of dried peas out of the pantry Which crop needs a young plant rather than seed at this point in the year Pot depth for every single crop, in inches, not vague advice The October step, covering, mulching, and knowing which pots to stop watering The November job that should not wait for next month's video A FEW PLAIN CAUTIONS Check your USDA zone before you sow. These windows assume a first frost between late October and mid November. If your winters come early, move everything up two to three weeks. If you are in zone 8 or warmer, several of these can wait until November. The zone card is on screen in the video. Water in the morning from here on, never the evening. Wet leaves sitting overnight in cold air is how lettuce rots, and October is when people lose a pot they had grown perfectly all summer. Two real safety notes in this video and I would be wrong to leave them out. A small number of people have an inherited condition called G6PD deficiency and for them fava beans can be dangerous. And only the stalks of rhubarb are eaten. The leaves are poisonous and belong on the compost. Nobody makes money telling you that the cheapest month of your gardening year is the one you throw away, or that a shallot set costs less than a coffee and feeds you next June. There is no scheme in it. The money runs the other way. So go and look at whatever pots you have, the tired ones, the ones already stacked by the wall. Tip one out, fill it with fresh mix, and put something in it this week. Then tell me in the comments which USDA zone you are growing in, just the number, and what is still alive on your porch right now. I read every one of them. Next month is November, when the cold arrives properly for most of you. But there is one November job that should not wait for that video, and it is at the end of this one. October is not the end of the growing year. It is the month that decides what February looks like. The people who fed themselves out of pots knew that, and most of us have simply forgotten. CHAPTERS 0:00 October is not the end 0:12 Don't reach for a pen 0:32 The October promise and your zone 1:27 17 Garden cress 3:04 16 Pea shoots from dried peas 4:33 15 Garlic greens 5:53 14 Chervil 7:15 13 Minutina 8:33 Garlic: three zones, three windows 9:43 12 Claytonia, miner's lettuce 11:19 11 Mache, corn salad 12:49 10 Broccoli raab 14:07 9 Sorrel 15:29 8 Parsley from a young plant 16:58 7 Strawberries 18:19 6 Horseradish 19:58 5 Egyptian walking onions 21:27 4 Winter lettuce 22:57 3 Fava beans 24:22 2 Rhubarb 25:46 1 Shallots 27:54 The October step 30:15 November's first job #ContainerGardening #OctoberPlanting #FallGarden #GrowYourOwn #PatioGarden #BalconyGarden #CoolSeasonCrops #VegetableGarden #ThePottedPatio