Growing Arugula: A Complete Profile
By Growing Home Greens Team · July 18, 2026
Arugula is about as fast as salad greens get, direct-sown and ready to harvest in around 40 days, with a peppery bite that gets sharper as the weather warms.
Sowing it early, and keeping it coming
Direct-sow arugula seed as early as five weeks before your last frost; it’s cold-tolerant and one of the earliest greens you can get into the ground. At 9 plants per square foot, a single packet goes a long way, and because it matures so fast, succession sowing every couple of weeks keeps you in fresh leaves instead of one big flush that all bolts at once.
Bolting, and the beetles that riddle the leaves
Arugula that turns sharp or bitter has usually bolted from heat, like lettuce, it’s a cool-season crop that suffers once daytime temperatures climb. Flea beetles are arugula’s most common pest, riddling leaves with small holes; row cover from the day you sow heads this off.
A gap-filler that gets along with everything
Arugula grows well alongside carrots as a fast, non-competing interplant, and pairs naturally with lettuce as a cut-and-come-again salad green with similar light and water needs. See the full companion guide for arugula. Its speed and density make it a good gap-filler in the Garden Designer: sow it into whatever square is empty for a few weeks between other plantings.
Companion planting guide for Arugula · Find your planting dates
Typically viable in USDA zones 2-11. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.
Method: Direct sow: Direct-sow outside. Arugula doesn't transplant well, or doesn't need the extra time indoors.
See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →
How many Arugula plants fit per square foot?
Spacing: 9 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 0.5-1.5 ft.
Varieties worth considering
- Sylvetta: Cornell's Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners database describes Sylvetta (a different, wild species) as small-leaved, slow-growing, and slow to bolt, a good option if standard arugula bolts on you too fast in a warm spring. (source)
- Astro: A wider, less-lobed leaf than standard arugula with a milder flavor while young and cool, slower to bolt, and heat tolerant once it does warm up. A reasonable middle ground between full-speed standard arugula and the slow, small-leaved Sylvetta above. (source)
- Roquette: The standard, fast-growing salad type most seed racks sell as plain 'arugula', with dark green, wide, tongue-shaped leaves. The baseline this profile's other picks are chosen as alternatives to. (source)
Cited from the source shown next to each variety. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement.
Where to buy arugula seeds
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this page also go to other retailers we may earn a commission from as an affiliate, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products with a genuine consensus of positive, independent reviews. See the sources cited on each item.
See it growing
Search YouTube for "growing arugula" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)
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Growing Arugula: The fastest peppery green in a salad garden, ready in under six weeks but quick to bolt once the heat arrives.
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