Gone To Seed

One year we planted coriander in our vegetable garden. We love the leaves, called cilantro in the US, for Asian and Mexican dishes. It grew great, but we quickly discovered the problem with this tasty herb: it goes to seed very, very quickly.

Our garden coriander is already in flower.

As the plant prepares to flower, the leaves it grows become very narrow and they loose some of the characteristic pungent flavor that the lower, broader leaves have.

The trick, therefore, is to plant successive crops, so that there is always some fresh coriander coming up. Of course, I haven't gotten it together to do this and I'm still relying on the volunteers that pop up in the garden every year from the previous year's seeds.

And they pop up in between the other vegetables that I'm growing. So this year I'm trying to pull out some of the coriander before it sets seed. I'll let some plants form seeds, but collect them rather than let them fall back into the garden. Then I'll plant them next year, hopefully using the successive planting strategy to ensure a longer, more useful harvest.

The best laid plans...