Salad Burnet

How to propagate salad burnet

The rose family is where you stop relying on seed. Tree fruit (peach, plum, pear, apple) is grafted onto rootstock because seedlings won't come true to the parent. The brambles (blackberry, raspberry, dewberry) spread by tip-layering and root suckers — bend a cane to the ground, pin it, and it roots. Strawberries throw runners that root themselves into new plants all season.

Growing salad burnet in Texas

Give it full sun to part shade and lean, well-drained soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.

This is a cool-season crop. On the Texas Gulf Coast that means your real windows are fall and late winter, not summer — sow as the heat breaks in September–October and again in late winter, and you'll harvest through our mild winters while the rest of the country is frozen out.

Once it's rooted in, this is a low-water plant — overwatering does more harm than drought here. Water deeply to establish, then back off and let it prove how tough it is.

Harvesting

Figure on roughly cut as needed before you're harvesting. Pick herbs in the morning after the dew dries for the strongest oils, and harvest little and often — regular cutting keeps a herb bushy and stops it bolting. The part you're after: young leaves.

Making more for free

Save it the easy way — vegetatively. Because you can clone this plant from a cutting, division, or piece of root, you never have to buy it again: keep one healthy mother plant and make all the copies you want.