Hi, I'm new to the newsgroup and I'm hoping to find some advice about my cilantro. I have a good looking plant going in my garden in afternoon sun, but the leaves are wispy and thin, not full and hearty like cilantro I buy at the supermarket. Am I supposed to pinch off the little flowers that form (which is what I've been doing)? How can I get those full leaves growing? Thanks for any help,
Davlo
Hi! Cilantro doesn't like high temperatures; mine goes to seed quickly in hot weather, so I've decided to grow it in the winter, fall, spring here in California.
Susan H.
Davlo wrote:
Too late. Your plants have 'bolted' - changed their form and produced flowers with the ultimate goal of producing seeds. It's a one-way street, they can't go back.
Cilantro does this VERY quickly.
You can buy 'slow-bolt' cilantro seeds from Pinetree Gardens (and probably other places) or you can just cut your cilantro as soon as it looks like cilantro....
It may not bolt as quickly in cooler (spring/fall) temperatures, although I'm not sure of this.
Pat
You can easily grow it indoors on a sunny windowsill. I do this quite often.
Pat
If it works like lettuce, I have read that what triggers bolting is the cumulative amount of sunlight, not heat per se.
In Dallas, cilantro & parsley do well in January...
Hope this helps,
Mine peters out in high temperatures too but this can be mitigated somewhat by frequent watering and partial shade (but still enough light).
You need to re-seed every few weeks, or try to keep the plant cool, which is what keeps big leaves.
Cilantro has become a 'welcome weed' around my area. The seeds that fell survived an extremely harsh winter and came back in the springtime. I would keep the flowers and let the plant re-seed and eventually naturalize to your own soil conditions.
The flowers also attract beneficial aphid-eating insects such as hover-flys (although it's hilarious seeing a bumblebee land on the flowers...he practically bends a 2 ft tall plant halfway to the ground lol )
Dan
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