- This is about growing coriander and dill and I'm doing them together because they grow in much the same way you can so implant them
in much the same way they always harvest around the same time. And they both herbs that want to flower in the summer, even from early summer. So, it's now February, it's a good time to start them because it's early in the season, meaning we'll get more leaves before they go into flowering mode. And I filled a tray, a seed tray here, with multipurpose module potting compost which is suitable for doing this, but I haven't pushed in too
much and I'm watering it to make sure that the
compost is fully moist before I sow the seeds. And that's a pretty good general rule for when you're sowing seeds into trays, because then you know that the compost is fully moist saturated. And it means you don't
need to give any water while seeds are just getting germinating and that's a time when
it's easy to over water. So get it nice and moist
now and then sow the seeds and then we'll give one final sprinkle. And then I shouldn't be watering this tray for maybe best part of a week. So there's the coriander seed it's home saved in fact from last summer. And I'm just sprinkling it on top. Coriander seed is quite large so you could actually sow
these into little pots or small cells for planting out. So that's another option. There's always many ways
of doing these things. I'm just showing you one way here which is sowing into seed
tray then pricking out and you just have the
number of seedlings you want of strong seeds. And dill seeds look quite different. Again, they're related
to carrot and parsnip, but also of the umbrella family
related to coriander too. And there they are, I'm
just sprinkling them on top, not too thick, it's very easy
when sowing seeds like this to sow them way too thick. Look, they don't look much at this stage, but that makes it more difficult to deal with a thicket of seedlings. So a little bit of compost
on top, not too much. Ideally one is looking to
cover with just enough compost to make the seeds more or less invisible, but not really, not very deep. They'll still be often a
few seeds that you can see and that's fine. So, one final little sprinkle and then I'm going to leave
this tray in a warm place, like a window sill of the house or over some propagating warmth for about a week, maybe 10 days. And then we'll look at pricking them out. Here are the seeds of coriander and dill which I sowed on the 27th of February. It's now the 13th of March. So this are only two weeks growth and the nice seedlings, both
of them ready to prick out. So, what I'm going to do
is use this little device. I could use a pencil too
this doesn't really matter. It's just something long and thin. You want to leave them out
in the case of the dill, anything you pricking up, it's good to take out a few and then you can just peel off, peel them off one by one and make a little hole in the compost, pop them in pretty deep. So, the thing with pricking out is to not be afraid to bury the stem and that way you get a nice sturdy plant. it also makes it easier to prick out 'cause you're not worrying too much about that it has to be
all going in vertically and that kind of thing. So that's the dill and I'm
doing them one end of this tray and then I'm going to do the coriander very similar at the other end. So, for example seedling coriander and it goes nice and deep. Coriander and dill, lovely plants, fast growing even in quite cool weather. So these were pricked
out only two weeks ago and I could plant them even at this size but I've actually also got some that I sowed two weeks earlier than them. These are now six weeks
old altogether from sowing; dill, coriander, which I
pricked out into these trays. So there can be no single module plants to go to pop into the ground. And the ground is no dig. Undisturbed soil, is actually compost because I put the compost on top and this was well rotted cow manure which you can see has turned into a very lovely, fine soft tilth. And one thing it did have
was quite a few weeds seeds. So already I've hoed this bed twice and that's to remove
little weed seeds, Fat-hen, which is so small that you
can hardly see them now but that's the stage, which
it's good to hoe them off. And then you have clean surface for planting into less weeding later on. So let's make the holes and the bed does not have any sides. So, it's simply a question
of making the holes. What I've done, I did this before. I'm just using the divot
to make a little line. And that guides me as to where
I'm gonna put these holes. I'm spacing the plants, really close 'cause they're they like going in close together. And well I'll do is just for the purpose of this film a few of each, and I'll give you the idea. For example, the coriander here, they're slightly larger plugs and so I'm pushing them in really firmly. I'm putting them next by the way, to some beetroot which
I've planted very close and that's because I
want it for salad leaves. So, all of this bed is
a collection of plants which are going to be picked
off their leaves for salad. You see the dill, sometimes
one, sometimes two, and lots of little roots there, they're really ready to go in the ground. And I put it in them in quite deep. Well like all my plantings actually and that way they're well
anchored into the surface compost. And then it just remains after that. Although it's early in
the season, late March the ground is surprisingly dry. And this time of year, it's
really worth making sure that when you plant
everything is fully moist. So I'm really batting these plants in with enough moisture to
make sure that the compost around the little root ball is wet. And then all it remains
to do when using fleece to cover seedlings like this, you just pull it over. I'm not doing it quite as well as I might, I wanna just get it in
place to give you an idea. So it's just gonna sit like that on top of these seedlings
and they will push it up as they grow rather like in that ground. We can see this some change that's actually been there over winter and it's pushed up the mesh, that's sitting on top of it. And that way it keeps the moisture close to the seedlings. Here we have the dill and
coriander five weeks later, Planted late March and it's now early May. Look at that. So they've grown very nicely. I have watered them through the fleece. I've had this fleece row
cover on all the time. So do you see how they're
pushing it up as they grow? That is fine. We've also had some frosts. Unfortunately, although the
frost doesn't kill these plants it can cause a bit of
damage, but they're okay. There's two things I wanna tell you as well before I pick any, one is about weeds and under
the fleece weeds can grow. And in my case one of the
most persistent common one is this one, Fat-hen. And it kind of disguises very nicely. Do you see how the color is very similar? And that's one way that we
tied, they sort of merge. And so I always use harvesting as an opportunity to do some weeding. There are some little Fat-hens there. So that's the stage I
normally like to pull them out when they're still very
small or smaller even. And there's one other
interesting thing going on here, which is the plants, the food plants coriander, dill and these beetroot leaves as well are much smaller this side
than they are that side. And that's to do with this
purple sprouting broccoli which it must be sending its roots under the path and into this bed here. So this is something that can happen when you've got big tall
plants next to smaller ones. However, it's not the everywhere. This broccoli is actually
only got one more week before we pull it out. It's nearly finished. And that means that this
will then have free access to all the moisture and nutrients which the broccoli is just
taking for one more week. And if we look now, for
example, at a coriander, the harvest I'm doing is of the at leaves. I'm just using my thumbnail
to pinch them off. So, I'm not cutting. And when you pick in this way, subsequent regress is much stronger. I never tied here a little
Bridgette leaves at the bottom. And now we have a little coriander plant. That's going to regrow very quickly for another harvest next week and the week after and the week after one. These crews probably will crop for a good four weeks, maybe five, six, and each time giving, well,
more than this, in fact. And then also it's very
similar with the dill. So I'm pinching off the outer leaves and that is the first harvest. Leaving the smaller leaves in the middle means you've got rapid photosynthesis. You see, small leaves of plants do most of the growing, the photosynthesizing. So, leaving the dill and the coriander like that is going to
give us another harvest. So, we're gonna pick all of this tomorrow for salad bags for selling, but you, how probably you
would need just three or four of each and you'll have
loads of each hope, right? The way through the middle
of spring and early summer this particular variety of coriander has cool just fat leaves. You see how the big and flashy and quite often with
coriander, it's not like that. We've a thin and measly ,so there's a lot, I'm just picking the
leaves of one plant here as a first pick and you
can see how many there are. And how lovely most of them are. Well, pretty much older
than the little bit of branding around some of the tips, but basically that's a very nice pick. And they will go on producing
for quite a long time. So, the advantage you've with growing these kinds of herbs at home is you get a lot from a small area. The spacing is 10 inches
apart, 25 centimeters long. It's not a big space. They crop for quite a long period and you've got them there
whenever you want them. This lovely, fresh, juicy flavor.
