Coriander

If I could only choose one herb to cook with for the rest of my life, this would be it. Luckily I don’t have to choose :).

You can use the roots, stems, leaves and seeds in your cooking. Quite a claim to fame!

I want to show you a full life cycle from seed to seedling to harvest to seed and then back to seedling again. Initially I started with seeds from my favourite seed company, Mr Fothergills Australia. No I am not paid to say that :).

Now I have so many of my own seeds I can keep growing Coriander at no cost.

Here are the seeds:

Now for some secret seed raising tips that you can’t tell a soul:

Fill a jam jar with warm water and soak the seeds overnight.
Drain the water and then and sprinkle the seeds in rich, flat, well draining soil.
Cover ever so slightly with more soil. If you can still see the odd part of a seed sticking out here you are on the right track.
Keep the soil moist at all times until you see growth. Then water normally. I use a hand pump spray bottle every morning and evening to mist the area in that first stage.

Look at the amazing growth over 2 months:

After about 3 months of growth, July to September in Perth 2016, the plants themselves were about 30 to 40 cm tall. The mild winter (it was “very cold” in the mornings but rarely below 0°C) and their partial shade location stopped them bolting and flowering (until the last week of September). I harvested, used, froze and gave away the leaves and stems with a passion but was, happily, fighting a losing battle as there was just too much Coriander :).

Every now and then I pulled several of the taller specimens and after eating the leaves etc, I washed and froze the roots (about a third of the length of the complete plant is root).

Here is a prime example that went right into a curry paste: