Autumn Planting: It’s Not Too Late to Start These Seeds

27 September 2026, written by Benedict Vanheems

If you’re tempted to tidy up your autumn garden and call it a day till spring, not so fast - there’s a surprising number of crops you can still get into the ground, and some of them will actually do better for being sown right now.

Let me share five fabulous crops for gardeners like you who refuse to hang up the trowel just because summer’s over! We’ll be sowing a French kitchen essential, a salad that’s happiest growing in the cool of autumn, a veritable confetti of flowers, and a crop that will pay back your garden handsomely next year. Let’s get sowing!

Peas for An Extra-Early Spring Crop

Let’s kick off with a vegetable most people assume is strictly for spring or early summer: peas. But get the right variety into the ground now and you’ll be picking sweet, tender pods weeks before anyone who waited for spring.

The trick is choosing one of the varieties suitable for overwintering such as Douce Provence, Feltham First, Meteor or Wando. These tend to have round (as opposed to wrinkled) seeds, which have no little crevices for water to sit in. This makes them a lot less likely to hold onto water and then rot in cold, wet soil or potting mix, unlike sweeter wrinkled types.

You can start them in the greenhouse but they would also happily overwinter outside in any sheltered spot, perhaps under a cover of fleece or a cloche to protect young plants during the very coldest snaps.

To sow indoors, fill up a plug tray with all-purpose potting mix, firm it in, and make dimples with your finger in each plug to nestle the seeds into. Sow up to three seeds per plug to grow on as a cluster, without thinning out.

Peas supported by peasticks — Pea varieties suitable for winter sowing are usually low-growing and only need a few peasticks for support

A major benefit of growing them in plug trays is that the seeds can be protected from mice, who absolutely love peas. I’ve lost too many peas to mice, so anything that can done to keep them away has to be worth a try! You could, for example, start them off within a rodent-proof container or perhaps flex wire mesh over the trays to stop mice from burrowing in. It’s worth taking these precautions because mice are absolute ace detectives at sniffing out freshly sown peas!

Once your pea seedlings are around 3-4 in (7-10 cm) tall, they can either be planted outdoors or into greenhouse beds to give a super-early crop. Overwintering peas tend to form compact, dwarf plants that only reach to around knee-height so they won’t need much in the way of support, though a few twiggy pea sticks pushed in alongside never hurts.

Come the end of winter they will pick up where they left off and race away, delivering pickings while everyone else is still carefully nurturing their spring-sown seedlings!

Like all legumes, peas help to improve the soil they grow in, drawing nitrogen from the air and banking it in their roots. This is great news for any crop that follows on in spring.

Rocket in Next to No Time

Rocket is one of the fastest, most forgiving crops you can possibly sow! This is a salad leaf that’s happier in autumn than in the heat of summer. Cooler nights mean slower growth, but that slower growth brings noticeably better flavour: milder, nuttier, without that harsh, bitter bite that hot weather can bring on.

There are two types worth knowing about. Salad rocket, like the variety ‘Astro’, is quick, mild, and classically peppery. Then there’s wild rocket, such as ‘Rocky’, which has more deeply cut, almost fern-like leaves and a hotter, more assertive kick. It’s slower to bolt too, so it will keep cropping for longer.

Sow seeds thinly along a shallow drill no deeper than about a quarter inch (0.5 cm), then cover lightly and water in. Thin the seedlings out as they grow so that plants have a little breathing room, to around 6 in (15 cm) apart. From that point on it’s simply a case of picking the outer leaves regularly, cut-and-come-again style, to keep new growth coming.

Rocket grows just as happily in a pot on a windowsill or patio as it does in open ground, which makes it a brilliant option if space is tight. Simply scatter the seeds across the surface of the potting mix then lightly cover and water.

A lovely little bonus is that a light frost won’t damage this spicy salad – in fact, it actually sweetens the leaves. With a cloche or cold frame over the top you could realistically be harvesting fresh, homegrown salad leaves right through winter.

Calendula seeds — In many areas calendula will re-sow itself each year

Hardy Flowers: Sow Once, Enjoy Blooms Forever

And now for something a little different: flowers! And once you’ve bought your first packets of seeds, each year you’ll get more – for free.

Calendula, cornflowers, nigella and poppies are all what are known as ‘hardy annuals’: tough enough to shrug off a proper frost, while producing their glorious flowers within a single year. You could start these in spring, but sowing them now will gives them a fantastic head start.

Plants that establish over autumn and winter build sturdier root systems, which means they romp away the moment the weather warms up, flowering weeks earlier and often growing noticeably bigger and bushier than anything started off in spring.

Although they only live for a single year, the reason these vegetable garden-friendly flowers are fantastic is because they naturally drop their seeds each year and re-sow themselves, so in many cases you only have to sow them once. If you want to relocate some of them to another area of the garden, simply pick off a few seed heads and sow the seeds just as described below.

Sow the seeds direct where they’re to flower, into soil raked down to a fine, crumbly texture. Poppies and nigella in particular have delicate roots that hate being disturbed, so resist the urge to start them off in trays if you can.

Scatter the seeds thinly over the soil surface, or sow into short rows if you’d prefer a bit more order. Then rake over lightly to cover, tamp down with the back of the rake, and water in.

Don’t forget to add them to your Garden Planner plan, just in case you forget where you’ve sown them (I know I would)!

In really cold or exposed gardens, laying fleece or a cloche over the seedlings will help, but in most areas these plants are remarkably self-sufficient. And it’s not just about beauty for beauty’s sake: come the following year, those blooms will be a magnet for bees, hoverflies and other beneficial insects. This is a lovely, unfussy way to boost the biodiversity, and the pollination, of your whole vegetable patch. Lovely stuff!

Add a Touch of Class to Your Garden with Chervil

Now for a herb that is an absolute staple of French cooking, yet one you’ll almost never find in the supermarket. Chervil’s delicate, feathery foliage carries the softest hint of aniseed, and it’s the kind of quietly sophisticated flavour that instantly lifts an omelette, cream sauce, or even a simple green salad.

Chervil is a true cool-season specialist. It dislikes summer heat and bolts (flowers and goes to seed) almost as soon as temperatures rise, so the cooler days and nights of autumn are in fact ideal for sowing it. Sown now, plants can keep cropping into winter, especially with a cloche or cold frame for extra protection and warmth.

Chervil quickly forms a long taproot and dislikes being moved, so it’s not a good idea to start it in plugs. You do however have a couple of options: sow thinly into shallow drills about a quarter inch (1 cm) deep, or scatter seeds into a pot, then cover lightly and water.

Once the seedlings appear, they will need thinning to about 6 in (15cm) apart. After that, it’s just a matter of picking the outer leaves as needed. Like so many herbs, the more you pick, the more it produces.

One small word of caution: chervil’s ferny foliage can look remarkably similar to poisonous hemlock, so always grow from a reliable, named seed source rather than foraging for anything that looks similar in the wild. Oh, and add a label to your crop so you don’t mix it up with anything else that might be in your garden!

Sowing field beans — The big, chunky seeds of field beans are easy to sow

Field Beans to Improve Soil

And finally, a crop that might just be the most curious sowing of the lot, because I won’t actually be eating this one. Yes, with winter on the horizon, it’s time to sow another cover crop or green manure – this time, the super-hardy, super-reliable field bean.

Remember that nitrogen-fixing trick I mentioned with peas earlier? Field beans do the same thing, only on a bigger scale. As they grow, their roots team up with soil bacteria to pull nitrogen from thin air and lock it into the ground, all ready and waiting for a follow-on hungry crop like cabbages or broccoli to make the most of it next season.

Dib holes about 2 in (5cm) deep across the whole bed, roughly a hand’s width apart in every direction. Drop one seed into each, then cover over with soil and water well. There’s no need to be precious about spacing here; the aim is good, even coverage, not a tidy row.

Field beans are remarkably hardy, shrugging off temperatures as low as 15ºF (-10°C). Their tough, deep roots get to work breaking up heavy, compacted soil all winter long, while the leafy growth above ground keeps weeds firmly suppressed and protects the soil surface from being battered by winter weather. Then, in spring, before they flower, simply chop them down and either dig the remains back in or leave them right there on the surface as a nutrient-rich mulch for the soil life to work through.

Field beans are in fact the very same species as the broad beans we eat, just a different variety. So if you fancy it, you can always let a few plants grow on and actually harvest a genuinely delicious bonus crop of tender young beans, before turning the rest back into the soil.

So there you have it: five brilliant reasons not to put your feet up just yet!