How To Grow Cilantro...And Stop It From BOLTING!

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 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 seed. 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, 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 Bridgette 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 one's 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. I'm going to cover that up and water it in. And that's really all there is to it as far as germinating cilantro. It 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, seven 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'll 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 it 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 three 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 p.m. or so, which is great. So 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 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 sort of 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. 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. You come in and just clop 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, 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 windowsill. 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. I have a lot of videos on growing microgreens. So you could buy the cilantro in bulk and then just sow 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. Hoverflies 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 hoverfly 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. So 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.