Growing cilantro for the first time

[Jenise]

Okay, all you who think cilantro tastes like soap can ignore this one....

So I bought a cilantro starter, simply labeled cilantro, and planted it. Up comes this plant about three feet tall that has lacy leaves, or should I say fronds as they're dill-like, few and far between on fairly stiff and unusable stems. It does taste like cilantro, but if I pulled up the whole plant I would barely get enough greenery off it to make one bowl of salsa. I blamed myself, thinking I must have over-fertilized or planted too early. Oh, it's been blooming for several weeks.

Then yesterday I went over to a friends' house and while there admired her garden. Lo an behold, she had some cilantro she wanted to show me. Three plants, bought as starters just like mine. But all different. The first was identical to mine, the second was exactly what I recognize as cilantro, on a plant that's shorter and more compact but full and bushy, and a third that's the tallest of all and very full and very bushy yet with frilly lacy leaves similar to the first. Only the first one that's identical to mine is blooming.

If there's anyone here who's familiar with the various species of cilantro (I did not know, but should have suspected because there always is, that there was more than one type), I'd like to hear from you about what kinds of cilantro we've got going on here.

Hi Jenise, unfortunately I know nothing about growing anything, but I did find this little blog that seems to indicate that it's more in the way it's grown (at least that's how I read it, but now I'm intrigued so I'm going to keep researching - slow day at work )

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load ... 84527.html

http://www.howtodothings.com/home-and-g ... antro.html

Also:

Harvesting
Cilantro is ready to be harvested as soon as the plant is 4 - 6 inches tall, which can take 40 to 60 days after planting. It can take up to 120 days to produce mature seed (coriander).

If the older, outside leaves are harvested, the plant will continue to produce new foliage until it goes to seed. Large-scale commercial growers clip the plant just below ground level and bunch it. Many growers cut it off 1 inch above the ground. The plant can regrow for a second cutting; however, it does not regrow as efficiently as parsley and for that reason many growers just harvest it only once.

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Sounds like maybe you just let it grow for too long?

Oh - and by the way, I DO think cilantro tastes kind of like soap, but I still like it!

I used to grow it from seed, from my own seed, but all of sudden in the past two years I can't get the seeds to start--even ones that I buy. Have no idea why and haven't had the time to look into it.

It doesn't taste like soap--it tastes like underarm deodorant, but the organic kind...

I love cilantro but my problem is that it bolts into the fern-like state way before my tomatoes come in and even when I plant a second set in late June I never seem to have it when I really need it. In my experience, the good leafy tops come first at around 6-8 inches but don't stay around very long before it's morphed into that ferny state. I find that those ferny fronds don't have much flavor so I rarely use them. Let them go to seed. You'll get new plants next year.

My experience has been much like Kim's. Those darned plants bolt in no time and I can't seem to get any length of time that it really produces edible leaves.
When it bolts and then goes to seed, I've replanted and got a second crop during the same growing season.
The best luck I've had is to plant lots of seed (which maybe takes up more garden area than is worth) and then I have lots of young plants to harvest before they bolt.
Store bought fresh cilantro is the way I go now.

... but the organic kind...

%^)

You bad !

Clink !

%^)

... but the organic kind...

%^)

You bad !

Clink !

%^)

Figured someone would catch it

Cilantro bolts at the first sign of any heat. It loves cool weather. The store bought is the way to go or get it at the Farmer's Market. Try to find it with the roots, put in glass of water, put a plastic bag over the top and keep in refer. It will last for at least two weeks.
Also, I've been told that herbs do not like to be fertilized. I have never done it in 35 years of gardening. They come back every year and the annual ones do great during their season.
I believe if your cilantro is leggy and has fern like fronds, you let it get past the harvesting stage. I bought some at the store today, and that is the way it looks this time in the season. Farmers Markets here don't even have it anymore, it is too hot. I also believe that your friends cilantro was planted at different stages, maybe two weeks apart, to ensure a good supply, hence the different look to each one.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load ... 12076.html

Jenise,

I only tried to grow cilantro myself once, and I gave up on the project an decided it was easier to buy it when I need it from a grocer's.

Like many plants, cilantro lives in one of two main states:

o I like it here--time to produce more leaves and stems

o OH, CRAP!! I need to bail out and produce seeds pronto--and hope that the next generation ends up in a better location than what I'm stuck with!!!!!

This second state is also known as "bolting". If a plant enters this phase, it produces long stems (all the better to raise the flowers nice and high where pollinating insects can see them), flowers, and then seeds. And then the whole plant dies off.

What you want to try to do is to convince the coriander to stay in the first (vegetative) phase, where it is content to produce lots of leaves and short stems, and perhaps to propagate by underground runners and whatnot.

Good luck--my coriander all decided to bolt. From a whole spring's crop, I got enough coriander seed to make one curry dish. I never was able to harvest any cilantro leaves.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I believe if your cilantro is leggy and has fern like fronds, you let it get past the harvesting stage.

Karen, Paul, everyone: no I didn't. It never got TO the harvesting stage but has been like this since infancy, which is why I presumed I'd done something wrong. And which is why I went to such pains to describe what I saw in my friend's garden: she has one just like mine, and one right next to it that's a poster child for Perfect Cilantro (and that isn't flowering), and one right next to that that is beautifully dense and packed but lacy-leafed and not flowering. She planted all of hers at the same time, and about June 1st as I did.

Well, a little digging around just now tells me that Laurie's third plant (in the order I described) is a variety called Delfino, so that mystery's solved. I'd love to have one of those. I could find no explanation for the one that she and I have in common, though.