Fastest Growing Vegetables In Australia
Looking for the fastest growing vegetables to get started with? Lettuce, rocket and sunflowers are my pick!
If you are impatient like me, you will want to know what are the fastest growing vegetables to plant in Australia, because frankly the timing can vary quite a lot!
Things like garlic, carrots and even tomatoes can take the better part of 6 months and, when I grew wheat for the first time, I was shocked to find it was a 9 month journey (which I was happy to make because it was during COVID-19 lockdown!)
I like to experiment with new things in my garden no matter how long they take to grow, but I always make sure to plant lots of the quicker veggies each season, so that I have a solid amount of produce while I wait for the rest. I’ve included my pick of the fastest growing vegetables to plant in Australia below. You can’t really hurry nature, but the fastest leafy greens usually take around 2 months to grow: from planting the seed to fully grown vegetable. My tip is that lots of sunlight helps speed things along too.
Some of the fast growing vegetables I plant each year (above) including spinach, rocket, lettuce. Sunflowers are very fast too.
Fastest Growing Vegetables in Australia | Top Picks
Lettuce - is simple to grow from seed and shoots up really quickly, usually within 8 weeks from planting the seeds and obviously faster if you’re growing from lettuce seedlings. I plant lettuce in autumn and spring.
Rocket - like its name suggests, rocket shoots off super quickly and this is the very fastest leafy green I’ve encountered so far. The downside is, rocket grows quickly but then also fades fast too, so plant a fair amount in spring and summer.
Spinach and silverbeet - grow reasonably fast, especially compared to other autumn veggies like spring onions, celery and cabbages which take many months to develop. You can get a good amount of these in about 2-3 months.
Basil - is by far the fastest growing herb I have encountered, although this may be because it’s a herb that likes heat and thus grows quickly in the summer months. You can start adding fragrant basil leaves to cooking within 8 weeks of planting.
Sunflowers - while it’s not a vegetable I want to mention that in the flower realm, sunflowers are very very fast growing. I like to plant them alongside a lot of this veg across autumn, winter and spring to bring in the bees in about 8-10 weeks.
Lettuce seedlings = fast growing
My raised garden beds in my Brisbane courtyard - note the lettuce, rocket and basil ahead of the rest, even though they were all planted together
Looking for more information? Check out my Brisbane Vegetable Planting Guide or Introducing Salisbury Grange YouTube!
