It's time to put in those winter veges in the ground now, passionate gardener Lynda Hallinan says. The warm soil will help them to get going and we should hopefully get some rain soon..

And you don't need a lot of space to get started, she says.

'If you live somewhere where you don't have access to soil you can dig over with a spade, you can go to the garden centre and buy some big plastic containers and a couple of bags of potting mix and away you go...

'If you do already have a garden you can literally just dig the weeds out and put the plants in...”

To make sure you get a crop sooner stick to seedlings, she suggests.

'Go to any garden centre, you'll find rows upon rows of punnets of seedlings.

'It gets you a good month ahead so say you want to grow brassicas or leeks, if you're buying by seedling then you'll be able to pick it much faster.”

So what goes in the garden at this time of year?

"Spinach and kale and mesclun salad mix, [Italian salad mix] you can just scatter those directly into the garden and baby spinach is good too - 40 to 60 days [and] it's ready to pick.”

Watering in autumn is usually less critical than it is in summer, Lynda says.

'When you're first planting, you need to keep them well watered but once they've been in for a couple of weeks you really don't need to water much, there's no way it's not going to rain between now and winter.”

And if space is at a premium, go for nutrient dense food, she says. Parsley is a good choice.

'You can make it into pesto - you can use peanuts, olive oil and parsley and you get the effect of really good pesto but it's not expensive.”

RNZ/Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan