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)
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.