October is genuinely a payoff month rather than a fresh-sowing one. Garlic planted back in March — this zone's earliest start anywhere in the country — starts coming out of the ground, tomato ripens its first fruit of the season, and tamarillo gets the only sowing window it has all year.

Quick Answer: What to Sow Now

Twenty-seven crops remain open for sowing this October, including basil, beetroot, broad beans, broccoli, carrot, climbing beans, coriander, courgette, cucumber, kale, lettuce, mizuna, pak choy, peas, pumpkin, radish, silverbeet, spinach and turnip, alongside feijoa, lime, passionfruit, jerusalem artichoke, yacon, brussels sprouts, mustard greens and — for the first time all year — tamarillo.

Tamarillo's One Chance This Year

Every other crop on this list has a sowing window that spans two, three or more months, and several run for most of the year. Tamarillo is the exception: October through December is its only sowing window at all, reflecting the roughly two years it needs before first fruit and the decade of production after that. Miss this window and there's no second chance until next spring, unlike almost everything else covered across this site's other sub-tropical calendar articles. Tamarillo Growing Guide for NZ Sub-Tropical covers what to expect from that timeline in full, including site selection and the pests to watch for while a young tree establishes.

Harvest Payoff: Garlic and Tomato Open, Citrus Keeps Going

Garlic's harvest window opens this month, running through to November — the return on this zone's distinctively early March planting. Tomato's harvest also opens now, the first fruit from trays started back in June. Lemon (harvesting since June) and orange (since July) are both still cropping too, on citrus trees that have been in the ground since April's planting window opened.

Capsicum and eggplant reach the end of their August–October transplant window this month — last call to get either into the ground if you haven't already, since both were started as trays back in June. Eggplant especially benefits from not slipping past this deadline: it needs a longer run of warm weather than capsicum or tomato to fruit well, so a late transplant eats directly into the season it has to work with.

Everything Else Still Sowing

The bulk of last month's big rush remains open with nothing new to flag: beetroot, broad beans, broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrot, climbing beans, coriander, courgette, cucumber, feijoa, jerusalem artichoke, kale, lettuce, lime, mizuna, mustard greens, pak choy, passionfruit, peas, pumpkin, radish, silverbeet, spinach, turnip and yacon are all still within their windows from September. None of them ask for anything different this month than they did last — treat this as a continuation, not a fresh decision point for any of them.

Also Cropping This Month

Beetroot, coriander, mizuna, pak choy, radish, silverbeet and turnip are all still being harvested from earlier sowings, on top of this month's new garlic and tomato harvests and the citrus already underway. It's a genuinely wide harvest spread for a single month — roots, leafy greens, an allium, a fruiting vegetable and two citrus types all at once — which is as much a reflection of this zone's long, overlapping windows as it is anything specific to October itself.

Timing Notes for Sub-Tropical Gardens

This zone's frost window closed at the end of September, so nothing this month is held back by cold — the reason capsicum and eggplant's transplant window is closing now rather than opening is about their own June sowing date, not frost. That's worth keeping straight this month specifically, since October reads very differently depending on which crop you're looking at: some things are closing a window that opened back in winter, while tamarillo is opening the only window it gets all year. Neither is driven by this month's own weather — both trace back to decisions this zone's data made months ago.

Tamarillo doesn't have an approved cultivar sourced for this zone yet, so choice there comes down to what a local nursery actually stocks rather than a documented pick.

Know your zone? Explore the full NZ Sub-Tropical Planting Calendar for month-by-month sowing and harvest timing.