Tropical growing guides
All vegetables and herbs we have planting guidance for in Tropical Australia. Click a crop for the full guide, when to plant, soil temperature, days to harvest, pest watch.
These guides are written for the Tropical zone, which takes in Cairns, Townsville and Darwin. Somewhere else? Your postcode picks the right one.
Not your zone? Brisbane Sydney Melbourne Canberra Alice Springs Perth
Also handy: will it frost this week? and what grows in shade.
See what grows now in your own postcode
What the weather normally does here
Thirty years of daily records, averaged over every postcode in the Tropical zone, month by month. The highlighted row is the month we are in now. Planting windows on the crop pages follow these numbers, so if your own patch runs colder or wetter than the zone, shift them by a few weeks.
| Month | Day °C | Night °C | Rain mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 33 | 24 | 379 | 19 |
| Feb | 32 | 24 | 360 | 18 |
| Mar | 32 | 24 | 281 | 16 |
| Apr | 32 | 22 | 121 | 9 |
| May | 31 | 20 | 34 | 4 |
| Jun | 30 | 17 | 15 | 2 |
| Jul | 29 | 16 | 14 | 2 |
| Aug | 31 | 17 | 11 | 1 |
| Sep | 33 | 20 | 19 | 2 |
| Oct now | 34 | 23 | 53 | 5 |
| Nov | 34 | 24 | 119 | 10 |
| Dec | 34 | 24 | 248 | 15 |
Hottest day on record in the zone 45.1°C (January), coldest night -0.7°C (June). Wettest month is January. A wet day is 1 mm or more. Averaged across 37 postcodes in the zone, so your own patch will run a little warmer, cooler, wetter or drier than this. SILO Data Drill, Queensland Government, CC BY 4.0.
Browse by crop (A–Z)
Other zones
If Tropical isn't your zone, try one of these: