When to plant Salad Burnett in Tropical Australia

Tropical zone — applies to Darwin, Cairns, Townsville, Broome, Mackay and similar areas. Growing elsewhere? Temperate · Cool · Subtropical · Arid.

Salad burnett has no tropical sowing window, because this cool-climate salad herb bolts and burns out fast in the region's constant heat and humidity. Elsewhere it is sown direct about 5 mm deep, germinates in 14–21 days, matures in 60–90 days, and spaces at 30 cm with 40 cm rows. In frost-free Darwin, Cairns and Townsville, though, the cucumber-flavoured young leaves it is grown for turn tough and bitter within weeks, the plant runs quickly to seed, and the wet-season humidity brings on fungal rot before you ever get a decent picking.

Sowing calendar — tropical zone

No sowing window in this zone.

Growing notes

Salad burnett is a hardy perennial of cool European meadows, prized for tender, cucumber-scented leaves eaten young. Two things about the tropics work against it. First, sustained heat pushes it to bolt — it stops making soft leaves and rushes into flower and seed, and the older foliage turns fibrous and bitter. Second, the wet season's humidity encourages leaf spot and crown rot in a plant that likes its foliage dry.

The typical failure is a rosette that looks promising for a fortnight, then either flops with rot or shoots up a flower stalk and stops producing anything worth eating.

Your best shot in a place like Townsville or Mackay is the coolest, driest stretch of the dry season, grown in a wide pot of free-draining mix in morning sun with afternoon shade. Pick leaves young and constantly to delay bolting, and remove flower stems as they appear. Treat it as a short-term novelty rather than a standing crop. For a dependable cucumber note in tropical salads, look instead to heat-tolerant options such as cucumber itself grown on a trellis, or the leaves of tropical-adapted lettuces and mustard greens that shrug off the humidity.

Salad Burnett at a glance

Common questions

does salad burnett grow in the tropics?

Poorly. It is a cool-climate herb that bolts and turns bitter in tropical heat, and the wet-season humidity brings on rot. At most it manages a short run during the coolest dry-season weeks.

why is my salad burnett bitter?

Heat has pushed it to bolt. Once it starts flowering the leaves toughen and turn bitter. Pick leaves very young, remove flower stems, and grow it in the coolest part of the year to slow this down.

when can I sow salad burnett in Cairns?

There is no recommended sowing window in the tropics. If you want to try, the driest, mildest dry-season weeks in a shaded pot are the only realistic option, and results are usually short-lived.

what tastes like cucumber that grows well in the tropical north?

Trellised cucumbers themselves crop well in the frost-free tropics, and heat-tolerant lettuces and mustard greens give fresh salad leaves without the bolting problem salad burnett has.

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