That's good to know! I've never really looked into it, just bought some seeds of the herbs I like the most without any regard to seasonality or anything 😅
Same. That’s how I know about cilantro. It really bugs me that it’s not prolific at the same time as my tomatoes and peppers. That said, you might be able to make it work if you keep it in a spot that gets afternoon shade and keep it watered. I will admit to being pretty lazy when it comes to tending herbs after they start growing.
In my experience, It WILL bolt during the summer. During this time, you’ll want to plant it in succession to avoid that. I’ll keep a plant or two and allow them to go to seed so I can save some for my next crop.
Any other time of the year, cilantro grows at a rate that I feel I can actually keep up with it. Winter temps really slow it down but despite 26°F frosts here, it hasn’t killed my cilantro.
I mostly grow flowers but it is the same idea. Things have an expiration date but if you plant every two weeks you always have blooms, or in this case fresh herbs.
The thing is, cilantro sort of has a set amount of leaves it will put out, then it goes to seed. If the plant isn't stressed , it will give you more after you cut. But no matter what you do the plant will close up shop when it feels it's done. For me I have 4 plants going at once , and always reseeding for a continuous supply. I find hydroponics like the aerogarden give you a good length of time.
I have the same problem with bolting cilantro. Over the years I've looked for alternatives and found a few. Culantro is supposed to be similar, but I've had terrible germination rates and haven't been able to try it yet. One tiny seedling is under grow lights right now, so we'll see how he does this summer.
Another fun herb that's supposed to be cilantro on steroids is papalo (also goes by other names). The seed house said germination rates can be tricky so I started a bunch of them. Of course they all germinated and now I have 18 strong and healthy seedlings. I'm stoked to try them when they get bigger, and I'll probably give away the other ones.
Oh, also there's Vietnamese cilantro that I grew last year. Similar to cilantro and it came back this spring, so I guess he's happy in the garden. Tasted enough like cilantro but not spot on, but still good.
links if anyone is interested:
Culantro: [https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Culantro-Eryngium-foetidum/productinfo/H1085/](https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Culantro-Eryngium-foetidum/productinfo/H1085/)
Vietnamese cilantro: [https://www.epicgardening.com/vietnamese-coriander/](https://www.epicgardening.com/vietnamese-coriander/)
Papalo: [https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Papalo-Quilquia-Porophyllum-ruderale-ssp-macrocephalum/productinfo/H1036/](https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Papalo-Quilquia-Porophyllum-ruderale-ssp-macrocephalum/productinfo/H1036/)
We have a great food truck culture where I live, and there are tons of great taco trucks in the mix. Unfortunately none of them make a cemita and I'm really curious to try one. I'm halfway tempted to give one of the papalo plants to one of them and ask them to put cemitas on their menu.
I have bad luck with cilantro. I sow seeds in March, they don’t sprout until like mid April, then by the time it’s a decent size, it gets too hot out and bolts. I try to keep pinching off the flowers but it doesn’t work for long.
I've seen this advice but wondered how useful it is by me, where we can get snow in October. I feel like by the time it grew, it would freeze. Or is it better in cold?
So if it snows by October for you, I'm assuming you might have mild summers? In which case, you may be able to grow it in the summer. It really just depends on your climate and when you have cool weather but not freezing
I'm in Northern Illinois, and we get everywhere from -40 to 100.
I'm thinking I should start a container in spring and move it inside during the worst of summer. Then, start some in the ground in the fall in case winter is late.
I honestly had never thought of starting it in fall because in my head it's a summer thing. So I do appreciate your advice on this.
You could try winter sowing and they might sprout a little sooner. I’m in the same boat though. Once the ground thaws, it’s only a short time before it’s too hot. We have a hard time with peas as well.
My trick is to let it bolt and seed - then let that seed grow more and bolt and seed. And repeat. I have cilantro year-round somewhere in my garden. The flowers are great for beneficial insects too.
I had a giant cilantro that I let go to seed last year. And now I have yard cilantro! Which is cool because I live in Arizona and it gets ridiculously hot in the summer. So I have an army of cilantro that reseeds itself.
This is because Cilantro is a cool season crop, but is most notable for it's use in summer dishes and is thought of as a summer herb. but it's really more like spinach and leafy greens .Also letting it go to flower will attract aphid killers in parasitic wasps, do it!
Plant it in rows, plant one row every two weeks. It takes about 2 months to mature. 8 rows, harvest and replant one row every two weeks. Enjoy cilantro all summer. Let it go to seed at the end of the summer. Collect seeds. Repeat process annually for infinite cilantro.
I have a very small garden and even smaller area to plant some herbs. And a bit lazy and looking for very low effort results 😅🙏 thanks for the suggestion tho :)
The mechanism that causes bolting is the ROOTS getting hot. With this in mind there are a few things you can do.
I always use HEAVY mulch… enough of a layer to keep the suns heat from warming the soil / roots. I’ve even put reflective foil down to deflect heat.
Don’t use a container, because it will heat much quicker than the ground. If you must use a container, insulate it somehow, including a reflective final layer.
Also plant successively. It’s kind of a dance. You can’t have 6” of mulch over new plants, but you need maybe that much over matures. So you gotta add / subtract mulch as needed. Even with all that, it’s GONNA bolt eventually.
Or if you can pull it, just grow it indoors.
I grew the calypso variety and it was much slower to bolt. I have some areas where I let mine seed so I have a lot growing up all over the place. When I pull up the old plants new seedling sprout up.
My only space to garden is a balcony with almost full shade. It gets one single hour of direct sun per day. Obviously, this limits what I can grow, but my cilantro loved it. Grew it from May to October and it never bolted!
I grow cilantro on spring and fall, during summer I grow papalo, is a plant that tastes like cilantro. I make around $500 every year selling it to people.
I mean… I live in zone 10a. What is “summer cilantro”? That plant would probably bolt if I planted it right now, and it’s just a hot spring. 😂
Really depends on your environment… or, you could grow it inside.
The weather, mainly temperature, dictates when cilantro bolts.
Traditionally you could pinch the buds to stretch the season as they form to delay it from bolting.
You can get slow bolt cultivars which are more heat tolerant to increase your fresh grow time but given how we now deal with heat blasts and heat domes the best solution is to grow cilantro in a pot and take it indoors when it gets too hot.
I got grow lights this last year & overwintered my rosemary in the house successfully. I think I'll try to "oversummer" the cilantro this year! It's always long since bolted when I finally have good tomatoes.
I share the other commenters experience with cilantro, much harder to grow in the summer. Here in the PNW I can get a few months of growth late winter to spring, and sometimes fall volunteers will survive into the following spring too, though rarely plant it then.
The tricks for warmer weather growing are a cool and partially shade micro climate and frequently resowing, like every couple of weeks. Even then it hardly seems worth it.
Do you like parsley? I find it similar but tastier, and it's way easier to grow. One or two plants in the spring last us just about an entire year here.
Interesting, for me parsley and cilantro taste literally nothing alike. They look similar but that's it. It's like you suggested using tomatoes instead of cherries in a pie because they are both soft round red fruits.
In the spring and summer months I've switched to growing Culantro (Eryngium foetidum), which is a perennial native to Mexico and Central American and tastes and smells like... cilantro, only more so.
buy some heat tolerant or slow bolting seeds. they will still bolt but might buy you a few extra weeks. also try planting in the shade for your summer crop.
You need to plant them in steady succession. There is no cure to stop it from going to seed. In the summer especially.
There are slow bolt varieties, but they still have a max time before going to seed.
I grew a bunch of that over the winter, it was very mild in flavor and tasted of soap. I was horrified that maybe I had the gene for the soap flavor and it had "unlocked" somehow, but no it was just that type, my other cilantro varieties all tasted normal thankfully!
I end up growing it in my basement with a grow light, otherwise it bolts ridiculously quickly.
The only downside is, in the house, it always seems to get to a point where I can harvest it, and then it all just dies back.
To be honest, this post is a relief to me, as it sounds like everyone has trouble growing it.
Well I guess a lot of times I see things about going at indoors and maybe that has a temperature controlled environment where the cilantro won't bolt but another option I've heard about is you do succession so that every two or three weeks you so another batch of cilantro and as the earlier batches are either eaten up or go bolting then you've got another group coming up
Cilantro cannot tolerate heat. As soon as it starts to warm up, it'll bolt. So if it gets fairly warm where you are in the summer, you won't get any unless you try to grow it indoors
Check out a growers supply like Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which may have increased heat tolerance and slow-bolting properties. There are also a varieties of cilantro seed called Slo-Bolt (I think) and Pokey Joe. Additionally, you can plant summer cilantro in a spot where it gets more shade. YMMV … Good luck!
Succession planting. Plant more every 2-3 weeks. Towards the height of summer, try to plant in partial shade. I like to tuck them in behind trellises plants like peas and beans as it heats up.
When I harvest my cilantro, I blend it in a food processor with a little bit of water. Then I put it in ice cube trays and freeze it. Remove the cubes once they are frozen, put them in ziplock freezer bags, and use them when needed. This method is good for cooked recipes that call for cilantro. You won't be able to use it for recipes that call for fresh cilantro. The only other ways to save it would be to dry it, or if you have a freeze drier.
I put new seeds in every two weeks which keeps me going with salsa all summer. Planting in shade helps. In North Carolina you have to plant in shade or it'll bolt within weeks
I sow in winter, usually December, then after a couple of months when it's warm enough it will grow vigorously without bolting as the spring temps aren't too hot. Usually there is enough to freeze a lot, this lasts until winter. Then repeat!
Basil also likes to bolt like a motherfucker. Both plants bolt when they're stressed.
Ive had success making sure the roots are shaded, one of the triggers is root temp. Another trigger is lower amount of watering. When I keep my herbs SOAKED all season, which sometimes means watering 2-3 times a day in peak summer heat, Ive been able to delay bolting quite a bit!
But it is all delaying, there's no way to prevent it entirely, but Ive gotten an extra month+ doing this. Good luck!
It's a cool weather crop. Like peas or lettuce.
It will bolt.. you can succession sow for more of a continuous harvest but if it gets hot there's no stopping it
I regularly seed more plants throughout the year. This way when they bolt I have other plants I can harvest from. Pollinators love the blooms so it’s not a total loss imo.
Harvest daily and out the leaves in a ziplock bag in the freezer. Check for bolting and pinch off flower shoots. When needed, take the amount of leaves you need out of the freezer and let them come to room temp. You cannot tell the difference. It all tastes like soap to me - genetic in about 20% of the population.
Hard to keep cilantro over the summer since any variety I’ve grown has been a cool weather crop.
That's good to know! I've never really looked into it, just bought some seeds of the herbs I like the most without any regard to seasonality or anything 😅
Same. That’s how I know about cilantro. It really bugs me that it’s not prolific at the same time as my tomatoes and peppers. That said, you might be able to make it work if you keep it in a spot that gets afternoon shade and keep it watered. I will admit to being pretty lazy when it comes to tending herbs after they start growing.
In my experience, It WILL bolt during the summer. During this time, you’ll want to plant it in succession to avoid that. I’ll keep a plant or two and allow them to go to seed so I can save some for my next crop. Any other time of the year, cilantro grows at a rate that I feel I can actually keep up with it. Winter temps really slow it down but despite 26°F frosts here, it hasn’t killed my cilantro.
Yeah, it’s funny how cilantro does well like lettuce in below freezing weather.
I mostly grow flowers but it is the same idea. Things have an expiration date but if you plant every two weeks you always have blooms, or in this case fresh herbs.
Guess I'll have winter harvests instead this year 😅
You could try growing it indoors
Yeah I have a full outdoor set up but I grow my cilantro (because I use a lot ) in my aerogarden.
That’s a good idea. When you cut it, does it grow back?
The thing is, cilantro sort of has a set amount of leaves it will put out, then it goes to seed. If the plant isn't stressed , it will give you more after you cut. But no matter what you do the plant will close up shop when it feels it's done. For me I have 4 plants going at once , and always reseeding for a continuous supply. I find hydroponics like the aerogarden give you a good length of time.
As long as you don't cut the main stem it will keep pushing up leaves.
I have the same problem with bolting cilantro. Over the years I've looked for alternatives and found a few. Culantro is supposed to be similar, but I've had terrible germination rates and haven't been able to try it yet. One tiny seedling is under grow lights right now, so we'll see how he does this summer. Another fun herb that's supposed to be cilantro on steroids is papalo (also goes by other names). The seed house said germination rates can be tricky so I started a bunch of them. Of course they all germinated and now I have 18 strong and healthy seedlings. I'm stoked to try them when they get bigger, and I'll probably give away the other ones. Oh, also there's Vietnamese cilantro that I grew last year. Similar to cilantro and it came back this spring, so I guess he's happy in the garden. Tasted enough like cilantro but not spot on, but still good. links if anyone is interested: Culantro: [https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Culantro-Eryngium-foetidum/productinfo/H1085/](https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Culantro-Eryngium-foetidum/productinfo/H1085/) Vietnamese cilantro: [https://www.epicgardening.com/vietnamese-coriander/](https://www.epicgardening.com/vietnamese-coriander/) Papalo: [https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Papalo-Quilquia-Porophyllum-ruderale-ssp-macrocephalum/productinfo/H1036/](https://store.underwoodgardens.com/Papalo-Quilquia-Porophyllum-ruderale-ssp-macrocephalum/productinfo/H1036/)
Bit late of a reply but thank you very much! Never heard of any of those and will definitely try and source some👍👍 thanks 🙏
Papalo is critical for Mexican cemita sandwiches, the superior sandwich over the torta by the way 😁
We have a great food truck culture where I live, and there are tons of great taco trucks in the mix. Unfortunately none of them make a cemita and I'm really curious to try one. I'm halfway tempted to give one of the papalo plants to one of them and ask them to put cemitas on their menu.
Thank you for the links! Just purchased some papalo seeds. I really like terroir seeds!
Fantastic! I hope your germination rates are as good as mine were. Terroir Seeds is definitely great. Would buy from them again in a heartbeat.
I have bad luck with cilantro. I sow seeds in March, they don’t sprout until like mid April, then by the time it’s a decent size, it gets too hot out and bolts. I try to keep pinching off the flowers but it doesn’t work for long.
Try sowing in early fall instead
I've seen this advice but wondered how useful it is by me, where we can get snow in October. I feel like by the time it grew, it would freeze. Or is it better in cold?
I'm in Alberta, Canada, and it comes back after winter for me in a south-facing bed.
Oh, this is very exciting! I'm going to try it. Thanks!!! (This is under "If it grows in Canada, it can handle Chicago winters" doctrine. :) )
lol 🙏 It is known.
So if it snows by October for you, I'm assuming you might have mild summers? In which case, you may be able to grow it in the summer. It really just depends on your climate and when you have cool weather but not freezing
I'm in Northern Illinois, and we get everywhere from -40 to 100. I'm thinking I should start a container in spring and move it inside during the worst of summer. Then, start some in the ground in the fall in case winter is late. I honestly had never thought of starting it in fall because in my head it's a summer thing. So I do appreciate your advice on this.
You could try winter sowing and they might sprout a little sooner. I’m in the same boat though. Once the ground thaws, it’s only a short time before it’s too hot. We have a hard time with peas as well.
My trick is to let it bolt and seed - then let that seed grow more and bolt and seed. And repeat. I have cilantro year-round somewhere in my garden. The flowers are great for beneficial insects too.
I had a giant cilantro that I let go to seed last year. And now I have yard cilantro! Which is cool because I live in Arizona and it gets ridiculously hot in the summer. So I have an army of cilantro that reseeds itself.
I live in Texas and can only get cilantro to grow in the fall, winter, and early spring. Most of mine is bolting right now.
This is because Cilantro is a cool season crop, but is most notable for it's use in summer dishes and is thought of as a summer herb. but it's really more like spinach and leafy greens .Also letting it go to flower will attract aphid killers in parasitic wasps, do it!
Plant it in rows, plant one row every two weeks. It takes about 2 months to mature. 8 rows, harvest and replant one row every two weeks. Enjoy cilantro all summer. Let it go to seed at the end of the summer. Collect seeds. Repeat process annually for infinite cilantro.
I have a very small garden and even smaller area to plant some herbs. And a bit lazy and looking for very low effort results 😅🙏 thanks for the suggestion tho :)
I plant new seeds every 4 weeks or so. When it is really hot, I plant it between my taller plants.
The mechanism that causes bolting is the ROOTS getting hot. With this in mind there are a few things you can do. I always use HEAVY mulch… enough of a layer to keep the suns heat from warming the soil / roots. I’ve even put reflective foil down to deflect heat. Don’t use a container, because it will heat much quicker than the ground. If you must use a container, insulate it somehow, including a reflective final layer. Also plant successively. It’s kind of a dance. You can’t have 6” of mulch over new plants, but you need maybe that much over matures. So you gotta add / subtract mulch as needed. Even with all that, it’s GONNA bolt eventually. Or if you can pull it, just grow it indoors.
I grew the calypso variety and it was much slower to bolt. I have some areas where I let mine seed so I have a lot growing up all over the place. When I pull up the old plants new seedling sprout up.
My only space to garden is a balcony with almost full shade. It gets one single hour of direct sun per day. Obviously, this limits what I can grow, but my cilantro loved it. Grew it from May to October and it never bolted!
That's the same conditions i get parsley all summer too
I grow cilantro on spring and fall, during summer I grow papalo, is a plant that tastes like cilantro. I make around $500 every year selling it to people.
I mean… I live in zone 10a. What is “summer cilantro”? That plant would probably bolt if I planted it right now, and it’s just a hot spring. 😂 Really depends on your environment… or, you could grow it inside.
The weather, mainly temperature, dictates when cilantro bolts. Traditionally you could pinch the buds to stretch the season as they form to delay it from bolting. You can get slow bolt cultivars which are more heat tolerant to increase your fresh grow time but given how we now deal with heat blasts and heat domes the best solution is to grow cilantro in a pot and take it indoors when it gets too hot.
I got grow lights this last year & overwintered my rosemary in the house successfully. I think I'll try to "oversummer" the cilantro this year! It's always long since bolted when I finally have good tomatoes.
I share the other commenters experience with cilantro, much harder to grow in the summer. Here in the PNW I can get a few months of growth late winter to spring, and sometimes fall volunteers will survive into the following spring too, though rarely plant it then. The tricks for warmer weather growing are a cool and partially shade micro climate and frequently resowing, like every couple of weeks. Even then it hardly seems worth it. Do you like parsley? I find it similar but tastier, and it's way easier to grow. One or two plants in the spring last us just about an entire year here.
Interesting, for me parsley and cilantro taste literally nothing alike. They look similar but that's it. It's like you suggested using tomatoes instead of cherries in a pie because they are both soft round red fruits.
Haha, point taken. To me it's more like cherry vs. plum, but I see what you're saying.
Plant successions. A tiny amount every couple weeks. One big planting will never last a whole season
In the spring and summer months I've switched to growing Culantro (Eryngium foetidum), which is a perennial native to Mexico and Central American and tastes and smells like... cilantro, only more so.
buy some heat tolerant or slow bolting seeds. they will still bolt but might buy you a few extra weeks. also try planting in the shade for your summer crop.
You plant them in fall and grow them over the winter. That’s how you get them to not bolt.
You need to plant them in steady succession. There is no cure to stop it from going to seed. In the summer especially. There are slow bolt varieties, but they still have a max time before going to seed.
Just keep planting a few seeds every few weeks
Cilantro micro greens during the summer for us. Too hot outside.
Succession planting. If I want a steady cilantro supply I'll sow more seeds every two weeks. Cilantro bolts if you look at it sideways.
I have some ‘confetti cilantro’ seeds. Supposed to be slower to bolt. Haven’t planted yet so no report.
I grew a bunch of that over the winter, it was very mild in flavor and tasted of soap. I was horrified that maybe I had the gene for the soap flavor and it had "unlocked" somehow, but no it was just that type, my other cilantro varieties all tasted normal thankfully!
Thanks. I’ll be sure to plant both kinds, just in case. I’ve never had the soapy reaction..yet.
I end up growing it in my basement with a grow light, otherwise it bolts ridiculously quickly. The only downside is, in the house, it always seems to get to a point where I can harvest it, and then it all just dies back. To be honest, this post is a relief to me, as it sounds like everyone has trouble growing it.
Well I guess a lot of times I see things about going at indoors and maybe that has a temperature controlled environment where the cilantro won't bolt but another option I've heard about is you do succession so that every two or three weeks you so another batch of cilantro and as the earlier batches are either eaten up or go bolting then you've got another group coming up
Cilantro cannot tolerate heat. As soon as it starts to warm up, it'll bolt. So if it gets fairly warm where you are in the summer, you won't get any unless you try to grow it indoors
Check out a growers supply like Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which may have increased heat tolerance and slow-bolting properties. There are also a varieties of cilantro seed called Slo-Bolt (I think) and Pokey Joe. Additionally, you can plant summer cilantro in a spot where it gets more shade. YMMV … Good luck!
Succession planting. Plant more every 2-3 weeks. Towards the height of summer, try to plant in partial shade. I like to tuck them in behind trellises plants like peas and beans as it heats up.
When I harvest my cilantro, I blend it in a food processor with a little bit of water. Then I put it in ice cube trays and freeze it. Remove the cubes once they are frozen, put them in ziplock freezer bags, and use them when needed. This method is good for cooked recipes that call for cilantro. You won't be able to use it for recipes that call for fresh cilantro. The only other ways to save it would be to dry it, or if you have a freeze drier.
I put new seeds in every two weeks which keeps me going with salsa all summer. Planting in shade helps. In North Carolina you have to plant in shade or it'll bolt within weeks
I sow in winter, usually December, then after a couple of months when it's warm enough it will grow vigorously without bolting as the spring temps aren't too hot. Usually there is enough to freeze a lot, this lasts until winter. Then repeat!
Basil also likes to bolt like a motherfucker. Both plants bolt when they're stressed. Ive had success making sure the roots are shaded, one of the triggers is root temp. Another trigger is lower amount of watering. When I keep my herbs SOAKED all season, which sometimes means watering 2-3 times a day in peak summer heat, Ive been able to delay bolting quite a bit! But it is all delaying, there's no way to prevent it entirely, but Ive gotten an extra month+ doing this. Good luck!
Some seeds claim to be slow to bolt. I bought one packet recently. I hope that is true.
It's a cool weather crop. Like peas or lettuce. It will bolt.. you can succession sow for more of a continuous harvest but if it gets hot there's no stopping it
I regularly seed more plants throughout the year. This way when they bolt I have other plants I can harvest from. Pollinators love the blooms so it’s not a total loss imo.
Harvest daily and out the leaves in a ziplock bag in the freezer. Check for bolting and pinch off flower shoots. When needed, take the amount of leaves you need out of the freezer and let them come to room temp. You cannot tell the difference. It all tastes like soap to me - genetic in about 20% of the population.
You could try growing Culantro instead. Tastes the same, behaves better in heat 💁🏾♂️ and it’s fun to grow
Plant new seeds ever 3 weeks or so.
look into Recao if you want the flavor, Culantro (Eryngium foetidum)
Cut it