How to Grow Cilantro or Coriander or Chinese Parsley

There is nothing that beats the smell of fresh herbs harvested from your garden Cilantro, also known as Coriander,is a herb used world wide to add aroma & flavor to your dishes Cilantro can be grown in baking trays They can be grown in small containers They can be grown along your kitchen window They can also be grown in the ground In warmer places like California Cilantro can be grown almost year round And even in winters provided you germinate the seeds indoors. Hot temperatures will send the cilantros to bolt or create flowers So grow short but spaced out crops of Cilantro in hot conditions This means that you sow seeds every 4 weeks to get a constant harvest throughout the season. Now you could be using any kind of potting soil for your Cilantro plants The one that we are using is called Kellogg's Patio Plus which should be available in your local garden store. We will be growing our cilantro in a small but wide container Cilantro loves semi-shade You can also grow it in full sun but it will bolt or producer flowers quickly, which we do not need as we need to continually harvest the fresh leaves which we use as a spice So the seeds we will be using is an organic slow bolt version of Cilantro which means it will keep producing leaves for a longer time even in hotter conditions So what you do is take a few seeds and place it in the palm of your hands And gently split them in halves You don't have to split all of them Cilantro seeds need to be split or scarred for maximum germination rates This is a step which a lot of us miss Leave some whole and some split so you get a mix of both types of seeds for germination Use your fingers to split each seed (at least 50% of them) before sowing Make some space to sow the seeds And then sow the seeds evenly All over the container's surface You don't have to be too particular about where the seeds go Just make sure you're covering the whole area And remember that you have to split some of those seeds Before sowing That's it...almost done There we go... Now just cover it with some soil And your seeds are all set to germinate now Cilantro loves a constant source of irrigation Like a drip irrigation system It's going to produce a lot of lush leaves As long as you keep your container well-watered And its very important to keeop the container moist Till the seeds have completely germinated In a few days, usually about 10 days You will start seeing Cilantro shoots emerging Cilantro is not damaged by most insects like snails or slugs In fact even other common insects like aphids, loopers and others, leave Cilantro alone In about 2 weeks or so you can being harvesting leaves from your cilantro plant Just use scissors to chop off the top leaves And that's an easy harvest! Cilantro needs almost no fertilizer You could use a high Nitrogen fertilizer to get bigger leaves But what I usually do is use a good soil base with lots of organic matter And I think that's more than sufficient to grow Cilantro You can smell the fresh Cilantro as you are harvesting it And don't worry too much Just keep harvesting All the visible leaves There we go, that w\looks like a good harvest! And remember that no matter how much you harvest The cilantro plant is very versatile and will keep sending out new leaves for you to harvest! You can harvest many times from a single growth cycle of the cilantro plant. So as you can see a few days later, The cilantro leaves are back and we have competed yet another harvest We harvested as many leaves as we had done last time if not more And the cycle repeats as the cilantro plant is going to send out more shoots which you can keep harvesting later So I hope you enjoyed this video. Growing fresh herbs in your garden has always been a good thing to do in your garden And if you like this video, please leave your comments and do subscribe to California Gardening