Growing Lemongrass: A Complete Profile
By Growing Home Greens Team · August 10, 2026
Lemongrass is a tender, clumping tropical grass grown for its intensely lemon-scented stalks, familiar from Thai and Vietnamese cooking. It’s hardy only in zones 9-11, which means most gardeners grow it as a container plant, moved indoors before the first frost rather than left in the ground.
Starting it from seed is slow
Start seed indoors about 10 weeks before your last frost. Sow on the soil surface rather than burying it, since light aids germination, and provide bottom heat if possible, aiming for about 86°F during the day and 68°F at night. Germination takes 7 to 14 days. Transplant outdoors after your last frost once seedlings reach 3 to 4 inches tall. Space plants 8 to 12 inches apart in rows about 18 inches apart.
Because seed-grown lemongrass is slow to get going, many gardeners instead start from a live nursery plant or even a grocery-store stalk with its base intact, rooted in water before planting.
A container plant almost everywhere
Outside zones 9-11, lemongrass won’t survive winter outdoors at all, so growing it in a pot that can move inside before frost is the standard approach. It’s a genuine perennial where it does overwinter, forming a dense clump that gets divided every few years.
Harvesting from the outside in
Begin harvesting once a clump is well established and growing vigorously, picking leaf stalks from the outer edge of the clump first, whether for fresh use or drying. Cutting only the outer stalks lets the center keep producing rather than setting the whole plant back.
Lemongrass has no well-established companion pairings, and nothing it needs to be kept away from. Given its frost sensitivity, plan it into the Garden Designer as a container planting in all but the warmest zones, not an in-ground bed occupant.
Source: East Indian Lemon Grass: Key Growing Information, Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
Companion planting guide for Lemongrass · Find your planting dates
Typically viable in USDA zones 9-11. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.
Mature height: 1.5-4 ft
Method: Buy as a start: Buy as a nursery start and transplant outside. It's slow or unreliable from seed, so most gardeners skip seed-starting it entirely.
When to plant lemongrass, by zone
Every zone lemongrass grows in. Pick your zone in the header and it will be highlighted here. Each zone links to its full page.
| Zone | Start indoors | Sow or plant out | Harvest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9a & 9b | Buy as a start | Feb 22–Mar 1 | Jun 2–Jun 9 |
| 10a & 10b | Buy as a start | Feb 6–Feb 13 | May 17–May 24 |
| 11a & 11b | Buy as a start | Jan 8–Jan 15 | Apr 18–Apr 25 |
Harvest dates are about 100 days after the sow or plant-out date.
See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →
How many Lemongrass plants fit per square foot?
Spacing: 1 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 1.5-4 ft.
Varieties worth considering
- East Indian lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus): Johnny's Selected Seeds sells this species specifically, distinct from the West Indian type (Cymbopogon citratus) more commonly sold as grocery-store lemongrass stalks for cooking. East Indian types are grown more for their essential oil and lemony scent than for cooking, so if the culinary stalks are the goal, buying a live plant of the West Indian type from a nursery is the more direct route. (source)
Why each variety is listed comes from the source shown next to it. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement. The buy links are separate from those sources: they go to seed suppliers that sell that exact variety, and we may earn a commission on some of them.
Where to buy lemongrass starts
Lemongrass is almost always bought as a nursery start rather than seeded. Check a local nursery or garden center; we haven't vetted online start/plant suppliers yet.
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See it growing
Search YouTube for "growing lemongrass" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)
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Growing Lemongrass: A tender tropical grass, hardy only in the warmest zones, grown everywhere else as a container plant brought indoors before the first frost.
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