How To Grow And Care For Cilantro

Let's learn a little more about how to grow Cilantro. Cilantro is an herb that is most used in Mexican and South west cooking. This kind of plant is a little harder to grow. Even the seeds of the cilantro herb are used in seasoning different foods. The seeds are called coriander. This is a green leafy herb.

Best time of year to grow cilantro

This depends on how you want your cilantro to grow and flower. If you should plant this herb in the summer you will have a plant with small flowers, then it will seed in about 6 weeks or so. But in the colder time of spring or even fall your plants will grow for a few weeks maybe even months before it will flower and seed.If you want to wait out the bolting time you can put the seeds in a colder spot in the garden bed. You can even plant them in the early times of spring and then again you can plant more in the later summer time. This will be when the days are not as long and the days are not as hot.

How to care for cilantro

You may want to place you cilantro seeds in full sun. They like their soil well drained as well. The also like to have a ph of 6.2 up to 6.8. You will also want to mix some compost together for the soil, so it has better nutrients for this plant to grow better in.After the compost has been placed down you want to mix the dirt thoroughly. Now you can spread the seeds over the dirt and compost mixture, then sprinkle dirt over top of it. You do not want to smash the seeds into the dirt to much though. Now you are ready to hose down your cilantro garden with a light misting of water. To make sure the soil is not drying out you can take your fingers and comb over the soil to see if it dry and if so water them again.Now time to harvest them. they will be ready when they reach the height of about 6" tall, you can pick off the leaves around the outside of the plant. You will get around 3 harvests from a plant before they start to flower. Now after they start to flower and the flowers start to turn brown you can pick this plant by the roots pull them into a cluster and place the top half into a bag then shake the plant to break the seeds free. After you have done this then let them sit in the bag and dry out then shake the rest of the seeds free and you can even cut the roots off this plant and use them in cooking as well.

What can you plant with cilantro

When you plant asparagus, chervil even spinach cilantro will help these other plants out.And if you plant anise, beans and peas egg plant, potato and tomatoes near your cilantro garden this will help the cilantro grow better.

What you should not plant with cilantro

The only thing that I have read about and seen that you should not plant with cilantro is fennel.