October is the month most Irish gardeners stop sowing altogether, and for most crops they are right. The soil is cooling, the days are short and anything that goes in now has to survive four months of wet before it does anything useful.

One crop is built for exactly that. Sow it this month and it sits in the ground through the winter as a small, tough plant, then crops in early summer weeks ahead of anything you could sow in spring. That crop is the broad bean, and in October it is worth more than everything else put together.

Why October is different from September

In September the soil still held the warmth of August, so leaves could germinate fast and build themselves before the light went. By October that head start is gone. Seed germinates slowly, and a leaf crop sown now simply waits for February.

So the rule changes. In September you sow things that are useful small. In October you sow only things that are meant to overwinter small, and do their real growing in spring.

1. Broad beans: the one sowing that matters this month

Aguadulce Supersimonia is an Aguadulce type, the long podded broad bean traditionally sown in autumn. It carries eight to nine beans in each pod, and an autumn sowing gives you the first beans of the year, usually from late May into June.

Sow direct, five centimetres deep and about twenty centimetres apart, in double rows with twenty five centimetres between the two lines. The plants hold each other up through winter wind that way. Expect them to come up in two or three weeks and then stop at a few centimetres tall. That is what they are supposed to do. They grow roots all winter and take off in March.

There is a second reason to sow now. Autumn sown beans flower earlier, before blackfly numbers build up in early summer, so they usually suffer far less from it than a spring sowing.

If your ground is heavy and sits waterlogged in winter, sow one bean to a small pot instead, keep them in a cold frame or an unheated porch, and plant them out in March. You still get most of the head start without losing seed to rot.

2. Flat leaf parsley: on the windowsill, not in the bed

Italian flat leaf parsley is cold resistant once it is growing, but the seed is slow to germinate in cold soil. In October it belongs in a pot on a bright windowsill indoors.

Soak the seed in water overnight, sow it thinly across the surface of a pot, cover lightly and keep it just damp. Parsley takes three to four weeks to come up, so do not give up on it. By Christmas you will be cutting it for the kitchen while the plants outside have stopped.

What not to sow in October

Peas are the common mistake. The varieties most gardeners grow, including the ones we stock, are spring sowings: seed put into cold, wet October soil tends to rot before it germinates. Wait until March or April and they will overtake anything sown now.

The same goes for most leaves and roots. If they are not in by the end of September, note them for next year rather than wasting seed.

The other October job: harvesting what you already sowed

If you sowed cavolo nero or radicchio earlier in the year, October and November are when they come into their own, because both improve after the first cold nights. Pick cavolo nero from the bottom of the stem up, a few leaves per plant at a time, and it keeps producing through the winter.

What to do this weekend

Clear one bed of whatever has finished. Do not dig it. Rake it level, put in a double row of broad beans, and cover the rest of the bare soil with compost or cardboard so the rain does not wash the structure out of it over winter. Then put a pot of parsley on the kitchen windowsill.

That is half an hour of work, and it means the first fresh beans of next year come from your own garden in May instead of from a shop in July.

All seed is posted from Co. Longford. BloomySeeds is an Irish stockist of Franchi Sementi seed.