🍅Tomato
Skip the steamy mid-summer — autumn and late winter sowings do best.
Varieties for home gardens: Grosse Lisse, Apollo, Tommy Toe, Roma
September 2026 · Subtropical climate zone · QLD
What to plant now in Brisbane
Brisbane's vegetable calendar runs upside-down compared with the southern capitals: the mild, dry winter is the best time to grow the European crops (tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, peas), while the hot, wet summer belongs to the tropicals like snake beans, okra, sweet potato and eggplant. Get that switch right and you can harvest something every week of the year.
Updated 10 September 202630 crops to sow or plant this monthOccasional light frosts June – August, mostly inland
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The short answer
In short: this September in Brisbane, sow or plant tomato, capsicum, chilli, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber, sweet corn, bush beans, climbing beans; herbs: basil, mint; fruit: passionfruit, lemon, orange, lime.
Hold off on carrot (from February), garlic (from March), strawberry (from March).
Vegetables to plant in Brisbane in September
21 vegetables are in their sowing or planting window for the subtropical zone this month. “Ready in” is time from sowing to first pick.
🫑Capsicum
Loves a long warm season. Pick the first fruit green to keep the plant setting more; later fruit can ripen to red on the bush.
Varieties for home gardens: Californian Wonder, Giant Bell
🌶️Chilli
Treat like capsicum but tougher — chillies shrug off heat. In frost-free spots a plant will crop for several years.
Varieties for home gardens: Cayenne, Jalapeño, Birdseye
🍆Eggplant
Needs real warmth to get going — don't rush it into cold soil. Pick fruit while the skin is glossy; dull skin means seedy and bitter.
Varieties for home gardens: Black Beauty, Lebanese
🥒Zucchini
Two plants feed a street. Pick at 15–20cm every second day — a day late and you've grown a marrow. Water at the base to dodge powdery mildew.
Varieties for home gardens: Blackjack, Golden
🎃Pumpkin
Give it room to ramble or a strong fence to climb. Ready when the stalk is corky and the shell resists a thumbnail — cure in the sun for a week and they'll store for months.
Varieties for home gardens: Kent (Jap), Butternut, Queensland Blue
🥒Cucumber
Climbs happily up a trellis, which keeps fruit straight and clean. Pick young and often; bitter fruit usually means thirsty plants.
Varieties for home gardens: Lebanese, Apple, Burpless
🌽Sweet corn
Plant in blocks, never a single row — corn is wind-pollinated and a block sets full cobs. Ready when the silks are brown and a squeezed kernel runs milky.
Varieties for home gardens: Honeysweet F1, Balinese
🫛Bush beans
Direct-sow into warm soil — beans hate transplanting and cold feet. Pick every couple of days to keep the flowers coming.
Varieties for home gardens: Brown Beauty, Gourmet Delight
🫛Climbing beans
One wigwam of climbers out-crops a whole row of bush beans and keeps going for months. Get the frame in before you sow, not after.
Varieties for home gardens: Blue Lake, Purple King
🥬Lettuce
Sow a pinch every few weeks rather than a packet at once. In heat, pick loose-leaf types leaf by leaf and give them afternoon shade — bolting is the sun's fault, not yours.
Varieties for home gardens: Cos, Buttercrunch, Green Oak
🥬Silverbeet
The hardest-working plant in the patch — cut the outer leaves and it keeps giving for a year. Twist leaves off at the base rather than cutting the crown.
Varieties for home gardens: Fordhook Giant, Rainbow Chard
🥬Pak choy & Asian greens
From seed to stir-fry in six weeks, and happy in every zone. Sow small amounts fortnightly; in heat they bolt, so give summer sowings some shade.
Varieties for home gardens: Pak choy, Bok choy, Tatsoi, Choy sum
Radish
The fastest thing you can grow — great for impatient gardeners and grandchildren. Sow a short row every fortnight and pull them young.
Varieties for home gardens: French Breakfast, Cherry Belle
🥔Potato
Plant certified seed potatoes, not supermarket spuds, and hill soil up around the stems as they grow. Ready to bandicoot once the plants flower; for keepers, wait until the tops die down.
Varieties for home gardens: Sebago, Dutch Cream, Kipfler
🍠Sweet potato
Grown from rooted cuttings ('slips') rather than seed. Give it warmth and room — the vine wanders — then harvest when leaves yellow, and cure in the sun for a week.
Varieties for home gardens: Beauregard (gold), Northern Star (white)
🧅Spring onion
Sow thickly, harvest by the handful, and re-sow the gap — or just trim them 3cm above the soil and let them regrow. The workhorse of the herb-and-veg border.
Varieties for home gardens: Straightleaf, Red Beard
🍉Watermelon
Needs heat, room and steady water while fruit swells. Ready when the tendril nearest the fruit browns off and the underside turns from white to buttery yellow.
Varieties for home gardens: Sugar Baby, Candy Red
🍈Rockmelon
A ripe rockmelon tells you — it smells sweet at the stem and slips off with a gentle twist. Ease off the water in the last week for better flavour.
Varieties for home gardens: Hales Best, Planters Jumbo
🌿Okra
The hotter the better — okra sulks below 25°. Pick pods at finger length every second day; anything bigger goes woody fast.
Varieties for home gardens: Clemson Spineless
🫛Snake beans
The bean that laughs at humidity — where ordinary beans give up in the steam, snake beans thrive. Give them a tall trellis and pick pods young at 30–40cm.
Varieties for home gardens: Red Seeded, Black Seeded, Red Dragon
Get this for your own patch, week by week
The Morning Post Garden Planner takes your postcode and frost dates, tells you what to sow, plant and pick this week, prints a 12-month calendar for the shed wall, and keeps a log of what you planted with harvest reminders. It’s one of the members’ tools, included in Morning Post membership: $79 a year for the household.
See the Garden PlannerAlready a member? Open your planner
Herbs to plant in Brisbane in September
Most herbs are happiest in a pot near the kitchen door; plant the perennials once and pick for years.
🌿Basil
Plant when you plant tomatoes — they're companions in the bed and the bowl. Pinch out flower spikes the moment they show and the leaves keep coming.
Varieties for home gardens: Sweet Genovese, Thai, Perennial basil
🌿Mint
Plant it in a pot, always — in open soil mint annexes the bed within a season. Loves damp shade and hard picking; cut it back to nothing twice a year.
Varieties for home gardens: Common mint, Spearmint, Peppermint
Fruit to plant in Brisbane in September
Fruit trees and vines are a once-a-year decision: this is a good month to get them in the ground in your zone.
🌺Passionfruit
A vigorous vine that wants a strong fence, full sun and a generous feed in spring and late summer. Fruit is ripe when it drops — wrinkles mean sweeter, not spoiled.
Varieties for home gardens: Nellie Kelly (grafted), Panama Gold, Panama Red
🍋Lemon
The one tree every Australian backyard earns its keep on. Feed in late winter and late summer, keep the root zone mulched (clear of the trunk), and prune only to shape after harvest.
Varieties for home gardens: Eureka, Lisbon, Meyer (hardiest in cold spots)
🍊Orange
Navels for winter eating, Valencias for summer juice — plant one of each and you're covered most of the year. Same care as a lemon: feed twice a year, water deeply in dry spells.
Varieties for home gardens: Washington Navel, Valencia
🍋Lime
The most cold-shy of the common citrus — give it the warmest corner you have. Tahitian for juice, makrut for leaves, and the native finger lime if you like showing off.
Varieties for home gardens: Tahitian, Makrut (kaffir), Australian finger lime
🍌Banana
In Queensland, biosecurity rules restrict moving banana plants and suckers — buy disease-tested plants from a QBAN (Quality Banana Approved Nursery) supplier rather than transplanting a mate's suckers.
Varieties for home gardens: Cavendish, Lady Finger, Ducasse
🥭Mango
Plant a grafted tree at the start of the wet with room to become a shade tree. Once established it needs little — a feed at flowering, and patience while the possums negotiate their share.
Varieties for home gardens: Kensington Pride (Bowen), R2E2, dwarf 'Irwin' for smaller yards
🥭Pawpaw
Fast, generous and short-lived — plant two or three every spring and retire the oldest. Perfect drainage is non-negotiable; a mound solves most pawpaw problems.
Varieties for home gardens: Red papaya, Southern Red, bisexual strains
Coming into harvest in Brisbane this month
Worked back from each crop’s sowing window and its usual weeks-to-harvest in the subtropical zone. If you got these in on time, start checking them now.
🫘 Broad beansif you planted in April
🫛 Peasif you planted in June
🫛 Snow peasif you planted in July
🥬 Lettuceif you planted in July
🥬 Spinachif you planted in July
🥬 Silverbeetif you planted in June
🥬 Rocketif you planted in August
🥬 Cabbageif you planted in June
🥦 Broccoliif you planted in May
🥦 Cauliflowerif you planted in April
🥬 Pak choy & Asian greensif you planted in July
🥕 Carrotif you planted in May
Beetrootif you planted in July
Radishif you planted in August
🥕 Parsnipif you planted in April
🧅 Spring onionif you planted in June
Not yet: what to hold off planting in Brisbane
Occasional light frosts June – August, mostly inland. Frost is rare in Brisbane itself and along the bay; it does turn up on clear winter nights in the western suburbs, Samford, the Lockyer Valley and the Scenic Rim.
🥕 Carrotwait until February
🧄 Garlicwait until March
🍓 Strawberrywait until March
🥦 Broccoliwait until March
🫘 Broad beanswait until April
🫛 Peaswait until April
🧅 Onionwait until April
🥬 Spinachwait until April
This month’s jobs in the Brisbane garden
- Get spring crops moving fast — they need a head start on the summer wet
- Set up fruit-fly baits and netting now, before the first stings
- Plant bananas, mango and pawpaw as the soil warms
Frost in Brisbane
Frost is rare in Brisbane itself and along the bay; it does turn up on clear winter nights in the western suburbs, Samford, the Lockyer Valley and the Scenic Rim.
Soil
Much of Brisbane sits on heavy clay that bakes hard in spring and waterlogs in the wet, so raised beds and a generous compost habit make a real difference.
Water
Spring (September to November) is Brisbane's driest stretch and the time young plants most need a hand; once the summer storms start the problem flips to drainage.
The pest that matters here
Queensland fruit fly is active nearly year-round in Brisbane and worst from spring to autumn, which is why the winter tomato crop is the reliable one.
Local rule of thumb
The Brisbane rule is to plant your tomatoes when the southerners are pulling theirs out: sow from March, plant out in April and May, and pick through winter before the fruit fly and the wet arrive.
Six Brisbane tips
- Sow tomatoes, capsicum and lettuce from March so they crop through the cool, dry, fruit-fly-light months of winter.
- Give the summer garden over to what likes heat and rain: snake beans, okra, sweet potato, eggplant, basil and a passionfruit vine on the fence.
- Set up fruit-fly baits and netting in August, before the first stings, not after you find the first grub.
- Brisbane's spring dry spell catches new plantings out, so mulch and water deeply in September and October while the storms are still weeks away.
- Raised beds pay for themselves in the wet season: waterlogged clay rots roots faster than any pest.
- Northey Street City Farm in Windsor and the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens both grow subtropical food gardens you can walk through for ideas that suit Brisbane exactly.
When to plant tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and more in Brisbane
Sowing and planting windows for the subtropical zone, which covers Brisbane, the QLD and northern NSW coast. Frost-tender crops go in after your district’s last frost; The Brisbane rule is to plant your tomatoes when the southerners are pulling theirs out: sow from March, plant out in April and May, and pick through winter before the fruit fly and the wet arrive.
| Crop | Sow or plant in Brisbane |
|---|---|
| 🍅 Tomato | February – April and July – September — now |
| 🥔 Potato | February – March and August – September — now |
| 🧄 Garlic | March – April |
| 🥒 Zucchini | February – March and August – November — now |
| 🎃 Pumpkin | August – January — now |
| 🥒 Cucumber | August – March — now |
| 🫛 Bush beans | March – April and August – November — now |
| 🫑 Capsicum | August – February — now |
| 🌽 Sweet corn | August – January — now |
| 🫘 Broad beans | April – May |
| 🫛 Peas | April – July |
| 🥕 Carrot | February – August |
| 🧅 Onion | April – June |
| 🍓 Strawberry | March – May |
| 🌿 Basil | September – February — now |
| 🥦 Broccoli | March – May |
Looking ahead: October in Brisbane
Opening up next month — the same crops as this month carry on. This page is rebuilt every month from the Garden Planner’s subtropical-zone calendar, so bookmark it and come back on the 1st.
Questions Brisbane gardeners ask
When should I plant tomatoes in Brisbane?
In Brisbane’s subtropical zone, tomatoes are sown or planted February – April and July – September. The Brisbane rule is to plant your tomatoes when the southerners are pulling theirs out: sow from March, plant out in April and May, and pick through winter before the fruit fly and the wet arrive.
What can I plant in Brisbane right now, in September?
In short: this September in Brisbane, sow or plant tomato, capsicum, chilli, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber, sweet corn, bush beans, climbing beans; herbs: basil, mint; fruit: passionfruit, lemon, orange, lime. Hold off on carrot (from February), garlic (from March), strawberry (from March).
Is Brisbane a cool, temperate or subtropical gardening zone?
Brisbane sits in the subtropical zone on the standard Australian seed-packet climate map — Warm humid summers, mild dry winters — your calendar runs upside-down: winter is peak growing. Occasional light frosts June – August, mostly inland.
What is coming into harvest in Brisbane in September?
If you planted on time, broad beans, peas, snow peas, lettuce, spinach, silverbeet, rocket, cabbage should be coming into harvest now.
Why is Brisbane's planting calendar different from Melbourne or Sydney?
Brisbane's vegetable calendar runs upside-down compared with the southern capitals: the mild, dry winter is the best time to grow the European crops (tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, peas), while the hot, wet summer belongs to the tropicals like snake beans, okra, sweet potato and eggplant. Southern planting guides will have you sowing tomatoes in spring, which in Brisbane means fruit fly and storm damage; sow them in autumn instead.
What to plant now in other cities
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Planting windows are the Garden Planner’s curated subtropical-zone calendar (the standard five-zone Australian model, each zone anchored to its harshest common member), reviewed against Gardenate, Yates and state agriculture sources in 2026. Your own garden may run a fortnight either way of the zone: a north-facing wall, a frost hollow or a coastal breeze all shift it. Members can set their exact frost dates in the planner.