Sometimes the best meals are made from ingredients scrounged from the fridge you thought had no food in it. Like last night, some ground bison a bit past its sell-by date seasoned with lots of cumin, the last shreds of sharp cheese, a few green onions that overwintered out back, hothouse-grown cherry tomatoes, a dab of sour cream, and salsa atop raggedy corn tortillas made a stellar taco. Then the piece de resistance---tender green sprigs of cilantro straight from the garden.
Just because everybody loves cilantro (and in reality not everyone loves it) doesn't mean everyone can grow it. It is, to me and many gardeners the most difficult, and downright persnicketi-est of all herbs.
In fact I used to tell people at my herb lectures to get it at the grocery store!
But it's just so nice to have it right out the door for days when you need to dress up a tenuous taco. Or make corn salsa, or sprinkle on blackened fish, or...
Cilantro is what I call a cool-season herb. Though not foolproof, there are a few strategies to growing it. Still keep in mind it likes to bolt, that is, flower and go to seed. That's not all bad, because then you have coriander, which is used in curry, sausages, meat dishes, teas, etc.
Cilantro is like a clematis; it like its face in the sunshine and its feet in the shade. I grow mine where it gets only mild morning sunshine. Planting it in your landscaped areas and crowding it among other plants is another way to help it keep its cool. Unlike Mediterranean herbs subject to crown rot, keep cilantro mulched to maintain cooler soil temps.
I have found that when I sprinkle the seeds in fall, they come up quite early the next spring, those plants thenre-seed themselves. As for next year's germination, they seem to know best.
Succession style planting, or planting every week or so, will keep a more continuous supply. Or do as I do and plant cilantro in several different places around the house, every year a different spot seems to be the magic site of cilantro success.
