One of the most flavorful herbs, hearty, strong, full of flavor : culantro. If you love the flavor of cilantro, then this herb is for you. Now, I have grown cilantro over the many years of gardening, but only a small amount of cilantro has been successful. Not because it's very difficult to grow but it only lasts a short season.
I have grown amazing culantro for years and years. There have been rough growing seasons at times and definitely had my trials through some, however I am sharing several tips to have a successful growing season for your culantro.
I have gotten so many questions over the years on how I grow my culantro and I will try answer most of those questions
Culantro actually goes by many, many names. Depending on where you live you may call this herb recao, chadon beni, shado beni, bhandhania, coulante, fit weed, mexican coriander, and long coriander, sawtooth coriander, serrated coriander. That's a whole lot of names but usually just one name is used in specific places.
The number one question I get is, "Where do you find them?!?" I have noticed culantro getting more and more popular which is amazing. I have even recently found plants at my local Wal-Mart stores in the garden section and have been told by others they have also seen it at theirs. What's even more amazing, is I have found the herb being sold in the produce section in local Wal-Mart and Publix stores. That, my friend, is so exciting because if you can't grow the herb, you can still find it to cook with it.
I recall the time when I received my first culantro plant. I was so excited, I placed it out in the sun, knowing it was a tropical plant, I watered it and then the plant went to seed. It didn't produce any leaves for cooking, and I was so disappointed.
This was before I knew much about growing herbs or growing anything for that matter. As time went on, I did my research and learned more about herbs and the growing process and life cycles of them. I then applied that knowledge to growing my culantro plants. My plants reached maximum potential by giving me amazingly, large leaves for cooking.
Beautiful growth and plants - I was so pleased. I had to share my knowledge with you all and that is what inspired me to make my YouTube video on growing Culantro. I never saw any videos, and if you look back on the date I posted it, you can see there probably wasn't much if any videos of how to achieve growth in these plants. I hope this information can help you grow an abundance of herbs.
1. When I first started growing these plants, my first impression was these plants are tropical plants, so I placed them directly in the sun. Especially in the hottest parts of the day, they were soaking in all that sunshine, which made them go to seed even faster.
Turns out, these plants thrive in shade. They love shade and cool areas. Not the hot sun as I first thought,
They do need sun; however, I find they do best in the morning or evening sun. Morning is my preference and is what I do for my plants, but definitely not middle of the day sun. I place my plants in an area that gets morning sun, but around noon is starts to shade in that area which works well. I suggest finding a spot like that, moving them if needed, or getting some sort of protection from the sun for them.
2. Bolting. Your plant will try to bolt throughout its life. It will start to produce long stems instead of leaves, and these stems will eventually turn into flowers. These flowers contain the seeds, and eventually your plant will put all of its life into producing seeds, as opposed to producing leaves. Now if you're looking for seeds then hooray, however, if you want leaves you want to snip these off as soon as you see them. Snipping them allows the plants to get the chance of making more and more leaves. Conitue to snip them everytime you see them growing. I always suggest having multiple plants, so you can collect seeds from some and leaves from others.
3. Watering. These plants of course need water; however I have found they do not like too much watering. Therefore, I don't recommend watering them every day. If it is the summertime I recommend watering them once every other day and if it's rainy you can hold off until needed. You will always want the soil to be nice and moist, but watering too much can lead to root rot.
Seeing that these plants do best in shade, there is a higher chance to having root rot, and fungus building up around the roots of these plants.
4. Feeding my plants have been an important step in maintaining their health. You may hear from those that has these herbs growing wild around their homes, that feeding isn't necessary, and that may be the case; however, I choose to feed mine because I have seen the success in choosing to do so.
I feed my plants blood meal which contain a high amount of nitrogen. The nitrogen is needed for producing more healthier leaves. I buy my blood meal off Amazon.com and choose the organic blood meal.
5. Protecting your plants from bugs that can destroy them is a must. Even though my plants are in our back patio I still get bugs on them which attack them. Thes best way I have found to help and protect my plants is to apply a solution of neem oil, dawn dish soap and water and spray it on the plants.
I also purchase the Organic Neem Oil on Amazon.com and I use all the ingredients in a spray bottle that is mixed well and sprayed all over the plants, especially on the bottom of the leaves where insects can cling to.
For the solution amounts you want to use 2 tablespoons of neem oil, with 2 teaspoons of dish soap for one gallon of water. You can of course cut those amounts down depending on your spray container.
So, to recap we have discussed the top five things to help you grow successful culantro plants. From keeping them in a shaded area, to less watering, feeding, snipping the bolts off and our neem solution. Let's get growing!