Cilantro is one of those plants that
we love to grow and eat in summer, but doesn't really do that well
in summer. So in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to have
incredible success with your cilantro. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help
you grow a greener thumb. We're hanging out in my salsa bed here, and this is a rare occasion
here on Epic Gardening, because I have cilantro in every
single stage of its growth, legitimately from seed to seedling,
to fresh, ready to use, to bolted, to even producing new seeds. The whole
life cycle is here in today's video. So we're going to talk exactly about that. How do you prevent the
bolting of cilantro? How do you make sure that if it does bolt, you still know exactly what to do with it, and there is a lot you can do with it. So cultivate that like button and I
will prevent your cilantro bolting by 20 days. And let's get into the video. Let's talk first about some quick basics
on cilantro, also known as coriander. So it's really popular in
Southeast Asian cuisine, really popular in Mexican cuisine,
all sorts of different culinary uses. And it's commonly referred to as both
cilantro and coriander here in America, we typically will call cilantro
the leaves and coriander the seeds, the dried seeds that you can grind
up and use as spices. Of course, you can also plant them and germinate
them and grow cilantro or coriander. Some places it's just called
coriander as a blanket statement. So that's just a little factoid to know. Another thing to know is some people
really hate the taste of cilantro or coriander. They think it tastes
like soap. If that's you, it's actually really not your
fault. That's a genetic thing. So you can't really do much
about it unfortunately. However, you can still grow it for someone in
your family that does like cilantro. For cilantro varieties there's a couple
that I really like the first one is going to be Calypso. This
one's from my friend, Brijette, over at San Diego Seed
Company, huge fan of them. And then you also have Slow Bolt.
This one comes from, I think, from a lot of different seed companies. This was from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I'll give you a really quick hit on what
cilantro seeds look like because they are one of the weirder looking
seeds that you'll ever see. It sort of looks like a little miniature
lemon or pumpkin or melon or something like that. And they're very lightweight. Right up here. I have some young seedlings
that have already been germinated, but what I'm going to do is show you
the direct sowing method that I like to use. This is definitely one of those plants
that I would prefer to direct sow because they don't take super
well to a transplant, I'm going to go pretty
aggressive on my spacing here. I'm going to harvest this
aggressively as well. So I don't need to get
too crazy on my spacing, but the reason why is because cilantro, it's got kind of a sensitive taproot
and it doesn't want to be disturbed too much, much in the same way you wouldn't
typically transplant I don't know, carrots or beets or radishes. Not
that you can't, you definitely can, but I would say in general,
it's a better idea not to. And that's really all there is
to it. I put two in per hole. This is the Slow Bolt variety. We're
going to cover that up and water it in. And that's really all there is
to it as far as germinating, cilantro can take a little
bit of time to germinate. And I do know that it likes
to have evenly moist soil, kind of the similar
approach to maybe a carrot. So I've just sown my cilantro there
in about a week, 7 to 10 days, you're going to start to see this. You
might say, oh, that's pretty tight. Well, that's fine. If you're harvesting
it for its fresh leaves, which you'll get in another couple
of weeks right here, these ones, you just come through clip them I'll show
you how to harvest these in a second. And then here's the final stage or close
to the final stage when it bolts just like this. Growing conditions wise.
The interesting thing about cilantro, I don't know why it is, but we like to use it in summer dishes
like salsas and stuff like that, but it really doesn't grow that
well in summer, like I mentioned, so here we can see one in my backyard
garden that has bolted quite a bit. You'll see something special
growing on it in just a second. but generally it's going to bolt. If temperatures get consistently above
80 degrees Fahrenheit or receives a ton of light and heat throughout the
day, that's its natural response. You can't do too too much to prevent that, but there's a lot of things you can
do to mitigate and work around that. The first of course, being just growing
it in the seasons that it performs well. So spring, fall, those shoulder
seasons into summer and leaving summer, it can work really, really well in. You can also just plant it in an area
that does get a bit of partial sun, even if it is in the summer.
So this is in my back garden. The sun is going to come in through
about there and it'll end the day over there. So it does get a decent amount
of sun here. It's somewhat protected, at least in the beginning of the day. I think if you were really
optimizing the placement of this, you would give it protection
during the mid-afternoon. So maybe from 12 to 3 or so, that's going to be where the
heat will spike the most. So you can keep the temperatures down
just a little bit by shading it out in the afternoon. Back out here in the
cilantro forest, in the front yard. Great example of the strategic planting.
This is a better example actually, because I'm hugging the east side of this
raised bed with a little awning here. So the sun only starts to hit this at
about 1:00 PM or so, which is great. Let's talk about some other strategies
to avoid bolting or at least slow it down. There's a lot of different
ways that you can do this. So it is the number one
problem with cilantro, but there's a lot that you can do. So here's one thing you
can do it's very easy. If you see a flowering stem start
to come up like this one right here, go all the way down to the
base. And just snip that off. You can use this in stocks and
stews and stuff. If you want, you can throw it in the
compost. Doesn't really matter. The whole point is to just get
it off as soon as possible. So this one's a little far gone. I'm going to show you some things you
can actually do with bolted cilantro. But what I'll do right now is just
clean this one up and prolong it. It's going to send a little bit more
energy back down towards leafy growth production, but it's really not
going to prevent it for too long. Once it starts to bolt, it really
just kind of wants to bolt. So this will stop it for,
I don't know, a week or so, but I still need to start
using this cilantro. One thing you can do for your cilantro
to prevent bolting besides taking off all the flowering tips is to never even let
it get to that point in the first place by harvesting it. So here
I have a clump you can see. Sorta one emanating right here. What I can do is I can just do
a classic cut and come again, technique where I'm coming around the
outside and just taking the most mature leaves like this. That's fine.
You can do that with lettuce. You can do that with all sorts
of different leafy greens. And that's a fantastic
technique. With cilantro, you can also kind of do
the lawnmower technique. So I've got one clump over
here, right? Nice mature clump. I have another one right here.
Let's say I want to make some salsa. I'm ready to go. I'm having a party. Well, what I can do is I can just lawnmower
this down. So grab it all like this, come through, don't go too low. You don't want to go super low and you
come in and just clip the whole thing off. Voila I have a nice chunk
here, I can dice that up. Do whatever I want with it. I'm still
going to get growth off of this. And it's a good way to mow
it down. Prevent the flower
stalks from even forming, get a nice continual harvest. And then next week I can
come around and do this one. Then by that time I can come back and
do this one back, forth, back forth. Great way to do it. A few more
strategies to prevent bolting, grow the Slow Bolt variety. That
can be a great one. But number two, that you can just do what I just showed
you where you plant plant, plant plant. These are four different weeks ish
apart. So succession sowing is great. You can just harvest this out
before it even gets to this stage. And you're good to go. You can grow it indoors if you
want to maybe a little window sill. Temperatures might be cooler.
Still might be summer. You still get that cilantro pep, but
you're not subjecting it to all that heat. Another thing you could
do is grow micro cilantro. I used to grow a lot of microgreens had
a lot of videos and growing microgreens so you could buy the cilantro in bulk
and then just sew it however you want scatter sow it almost cover it
up with a little bit of soil. Let it come up and just mow it down with
a clipper. I could do it right here. I actually want this to grow a lot larger, but that would be another
fantastic way to do it. But now we have to talk about why it's
not even that bad if your cilantro does bolt. So here we have bolted
cilantro. Flowering cilantro. What you'll notice is it has sort of
an umbral flower structure, umbral, just meaning it kind of has this
sort of umbrella esque look, it's clusters of flowers.
And this is really nice. Pollinators need a little pad to
land on. Hover flies will come here. Bees will come here. All sorts of things. You'll see ladybug larva spawning in
here. It's really good for that. In fact, I see a hover fly right in
the background right now. Remember at the beginning of the video, when I told you that it's known
as cilantro and coriander. Well, that second word is one of the reasons
why allowing it to bolt isn't such a big deal. Take a look. So these little balls right here,
these are young, fresh coriander. You could eat them just like this, or you could let them dry and grind them
up as a spice or use them to start more cilantro. But let's give these a
taste test right now. All right. I have my fresh picked coriander
here. This is immature. So if I tried to start from
seed, it actually wouldn't work. Let's give it a taste test.
Even this will taste different, not only than cilantro, but dried
coriander, that's more mature. It's a little bit more floral. I
would say a little bit more fragrant. The cilantro has that sort of peppery
sort of spicy thing that's going on. This is a little bit more floral
and fragrant. It's a great garnish. It's a great little thing to
add in to a salad, to a soup, to preserves. You can pickle it. You can do all sorts of stuff with it
and you can also just let the cilantro completely bolt out. You can let it flower. You can let it
produce coriander, let the coriander dry, and then use that as a ground spice, use that as a pickled spice or just use
it to start more cilantro next year. So it's really not a
huge deal to let it bolt. Of course you have all the strategies
you need if you just want to eat the leaves. A lot of
versatility in this plant, even though I know a lot
of you struggle with it. So hopefully this has been a
helpful guide. Like I said, a lot of strategies to
prevent the bolting, but a lot of just interesting things
you can do with cilantro in general and ways to grow it, no matter where you live, which is what we're all
about here on Epic Gardening. If you liked this video
fertilize that subscribe button, check out some of our other plant guides.
We've got ones on lavender, basil, rosemary, all sorts of things
like that. And until next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
