This beautiful perennial green adds a light cucumber flavor to your salads! Salad Burnet leaves have a unique and beautiful leaf shape and with their mild taste, they can be used in so many ways. Young leaves are tender and the sweetest tossed into salads, used as a garnish, or mixed into sauces and herbal butters. It tastes so much like cucumber...you'll have to try it to believe it! (Sanguisorba minor)
We also offer a wonderful vining Perma Cucumber plant with mini cucumbers: Cucamelon.
Why We Love It
Here are some of the reasons why we love Salad Burnet...
1) UNIQUE FLAVOR - This easy perennial green gives you a burst of cucumber flavor. Youngest leaves are the sweetest.
2) LOVELY MOUNDING HABIT - Salad Burnet creates a lovely little mound of greens. It's a great companion plant to fit between taller plants. We grow it under our perennial collards.
3) ASTRINGENT - When the leaves are brewed as a tea, Salad Burnet has been used as an astringent to stop diarrhea.
How to Grow It
Here's how to grow Salad Burnet:
SUN | FULL TO PART SUN |
MOISTURE | REGULAR WATERING, WELL DRAINED SOIL |
GROWING ZONES | USDA 4-9 (Not sure? Find your growing zone here) |
SIZE | 6-12 INCHES TALL & 12 INCHES WIDE |
GROWING FROM SEED |
Sow seeds 4 weeks before last frost date in plug trays indoors. Plant ⅛” deep and lightly cover with soil, tamp, and keep moist until germination, usually 5-10 days. Keep moist until ready to plant outdoors. Harden off for a few days. Transplanting once chance of frost has passed at 18'' spacing. This is a great understory plant, we plant ours below our tree collards. PRO TIP: Burnet will die back in the cold season and regrow in the spring. Harvest from your plant regularly to keep it compact to have a continuous supply of young, sweet leaves. |
How to Harvest & Use It
Tender leaves have the lightest texture and flavor. Harvest from the outside of the plant to the inside and never harvest more than 1/3 of the leaves at a time. Use the leaves in salads, sandwiches, as a garnish on soups or as a cold infusion in water as a light refreshing beverage with some lemon.