A Better Way to Grow Cilantro – For Your Cooking Garden

Posted by admin on September 24, 2008

Linda Lamb Peters

by Sharon Cohoon and Lauren Bonar Swezey 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have cilantro growing right outside your kitchen door? Whenever you wanted to fix Mexican salsa or guacamole, or a Middle Eastern yogurt sauce for your lamb kabobs, there the lacy, sweetly pungent leaves would be, ready to harvest.

But if you’ve ever tried to grow it, you’ve probably noticed that cilantro yields a fast crop; plants are barely up before they try to flower and set seeds. So those tasty leaves aren’t around long, especially in warm weather.

Rob D. Brodman

To keep leaves coming, you can sow seeds every two weeks for a continuous crop. Or, even better, try the method we perfected in Sunset’s test garden last year: Grow cilantro as you would mesclun. Sow seeds thickly in a wide, shallow container; then, as soon as plants are 3 to 4 inches tall and sporting a couple of cuttable leaves, use scissors to cut off some foliage for cooking as shown, at top right. Shear from a different section of the container every time, rotating the pot as you go and never letting plants in any area mature. By the time you get back to the first section harvested, new leaves will have appeared.

Growing tips

1. Select a bowl-shaped container at least 18 inches wide and 8 to 10 inches deep.

2. Fill the pot with a fast-draining potting soil; mix in an organic granular fertilizer.

3. Before seeding, moisten the soil using a fine spray from the hose. Because the seeds are fairly small, mix them in a bowl with sand (3 parts sand to 1 part seed) so they’ll disperse more evenly. Sow the seeds, then cover lightly with soil.

4. Gently mist the soil  so as not to displace the seeds.

5. Place containers in full sun or, if you live in a hot climate, light shade. Seeds should germinate in 7 to 10 days.

6. Harvest at least weekly to keep leaves coming. Using this method, it’s possible to harvest four crops from a single pot.

The above article is from www.sunset.com and is a great idea. I’ve been trying to think of a gift idea for a friend of mine, and this just may be the ticket. She loves cilantro and has a south facing kitchen with a bay window. She could have cilantro year round!

Keeping Pests Out of Your Container Cooking Garden

Posted by admin on September 21, 2008

There are some critters that are prone to hiding at the bottom of your plant containers in the drain holes. These bugs are snails, slugs, sow bugs, earwigs and millipedes. This occurs because over time soil drops out the hole creating nice haven during the heat of the day for these intruders to hide. Once it’s evening, these creatures come out to feast on your garden. We talked about snails and slugs in they yard and how to minimize their intrusion, this is another of their hiding places.

To keep these bugs out of their hiding place, you will need to cove the bottom of every planter pot that you use. The way to do this is to place a cutting of shade cloth on the bottom of the planter before adding your soil. Typically, you can find shade cloth in the gardening section of the major home improvement stores. You will likely have to buy a minimum of a yard of the material. Cut a piece to cover the hole, generally 3×3 for smaller pots, a good rule of thumb is to have th corners touching the sides.

Larger pots require a greater amount of material. For gallon size containers and larger, you will want to cut 6 inches more than the diameter of your pot, allowing the fabric to go up the sides about 3 inches all the way around. This is to ensure the coverage of all the holes in the bottom. When you add the soil, push on it gently to push some fabric into the hole(s) closing the space underneath the planter as well as keeping the soil contained. Having a container vegetable garden is one way for you to have a cooking garden year round.

To your success!