The October weather has certainly made the vegetable garden burst with growth. Broad beans are ready for harvest, garlic is bulbing quickly, and the leafy greens are looking deliciously tall and robust.

If you have managed to keep the vegetables well-watered during the warmer-than-expected October, then your garden will be looking just as fabulous and productive.

A little bit of rain this month should ease the transition to summer, and our friends at the BoM have suggested that there is a good chance of average summer rainfall in our cold/cool climate region, with the possibility of a late spring early summer La Niña event.

As there are no guarantees with the weather in these changing times, one way to tackle this uncertainty is through an approach we refer to as contingency planting. This includes succession planting and planting “bush” and “vine” varieties of the same vegetable.

Bush or determinate types are generally bushy, compact and produce their fruit all at once, while “vine” or indeterminate types are sprawling or vining, and make their fruit continuously throughout the season. The vine types require a little more support and maintenance than the bush type.

The categories of “bush” and “vine” types are found in many of the summer vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas and squash, for example. This category has generally only been recognised as significant by gardeners when planting tomatoes and potatoes. However, there are other summer vegetables to which these categories apply, and with the growing unpredictability of our weather, these may become more important in the near future.

Seed and seedling suppliers will have to catch up and offer more information about vegetable growing and fruiting habits than they currently do.

There are lots of options when it comes to seedlings. Photo: Wynlen House.

Vegetables for planting this month include a wide range of wonderful summer vegetables and fruits. Plant out your tomato seedlings, cucumber, squash, pumpkin, fingerling eggplants, sweet banana peppers, and chillies of all kinds (favouring the long or horn-shaped varieties, as they harvest earlier than the large bell types).

Green beans can be planted directly into the ground this month as the risk of frost declines. With any luck, there won’t be a frost to wipe out young plants. Bush beans are often referred to as early beans on seed packets. This is because they harvest earlier than climbing beans. Climbing beans are called late varieties because they produce fruit for a longer period. In horticultural and kitchen garden language, an early variety does not mean it is planted early, but rather that it is harvested early. Likewise, late season means it is harvested later..

Another strategy of contingency planting is to plant the same vegetable more than once during the season. This is called succession planting. While a number of summer vegetables are essentially only grown once a year, planting a mix of determinant and indeterminate types can provide an opportunity to increase and extend the harvest, particularly as Autumn tends to be warmer.

If there is a lasting warm spell extending into Autumn, your second planting of beans, for example, will be there to take advantage of the extended growing season. You can also repeat this strategy with potatoes and, if you are lucky, tomatoes. Be mindful that you may run out of warm Autumn weather and end up with a lot of green tomatoes. While tomatoes can continue to ripen after harvest, you can also enjoy fried green tomatoes as a mealtime side dish and make green tomato pickles to use up the unripe fruit.

Garlic is bulbing quickly this year. Photo: Wynlen House.

In Australia, we tend to mainly grow and eat “green” beans; that is, beans that are grown and consumed for the flesh, not the bean inside. The majority of beans (legumes) grown in the world are grown for the pulse (the bean inside), which is eaten when dried, while the flesh of the bean pod is not eaten.

There are approximately 16,000 different types of pulses grown and consumed worldwide. They are incredibly versatile and have great nutritional value, and can be prepared in many ways: canned, cooked, dried, frozen, ground into flour or split. These include soybeans, chickpeas, lentils, white beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, navy beans, and black beans, to mention a few.

If your kitchen garden has some spare space, why not experiment? In our cool/cold climate, when considering growing pulses, it is essential to select varieties that reach maturity in under 100 days, as the majority of pulses are frost-intolerant. Any hint of a frost can bring on their demise. Borlotti beans are ready in 60 to 70 days, while cannellini beans are ready in 70 to 85 days. Kidney beans, on the other hand, can take between 100 and 150 days from planting to harvest.

As with all legumes or pulses, some varieties are grown during the cool seasons (such as chickpeas, lentils, broad beans, or fava beans), while others are grown during the warmer seasons. Green beans, cannellini and borlotti are warmer-season varieties.

If you cannot obtain seeds, it is possible to grow using dried beans purchased for consumption. It is probably best to buy organic dried beans for planting from a whole food store rather than a non-organic supermarket. Eating beans purchased for planting may not have as great a germination rate as those purchased as seed stock because storage temperatures for seed stock are lower than those for dried food stock. However, dried beans are relatively cheap to buy, so to overcome low germination rates, plant three seeds where you would normally plant one. You can always thin them out once they germinate.

November is a great time to get busy planting in the garden. Not only can all the summer vegetables be planted, but also the kitchen staples, such as carrots, parsnips, beetroot, brassicas, lettuces, and other edible greens. Happy Gardening!

Bronwyn Richards and Helen Lynch run Wynlen House Artisan Village Farm and Learning Centre, a small village organic market garden in Braidwood, NSW. Since 2006, they have grown and sold fresh vegetables, eggs, preserves and garlic, and teach others to do the same.