Cooler Temp Herbs

[Ridgerunner]

Here's what my cilantro looked like this morning. The plants in front I grew from seed saved from last year. I've been keeping it drastically cut back and dehydrating it. The stuff in the background are plants I bought and transplanted earlier.

Here's a close-up of the older plants that I let go a while back. I cut them this morning and put them in brown paper bags to dry out so I can harvest the coriander.

Just for fun my parsley and dill. The parsley I seriously keep cut back, but the dill I let go to form seed heads. I used some of those dill seed heads on pickles this morning.

 

[ducks4you]

Lovely! Won't be able to fix my herb garden over RUN with oregano until 2015.

 

[baymule]

I planted dill last year. Dunno why, I am not fond of dill pickles. One came back from seed this spring and I saved seed, shook some out. I am on my second round of dill now, it is just starting to make flower heads. I like dilled potatoes and I like dill weed on vegetables...... I'll have to find more ways to use it and make sure I plant it in my new garden. Putting herb garden on list of things to do......

 

[ninnymary]

I add dry dill to my potatoe and macaroni salads.

Mary

 

[Just-Moxie]

My parsley came back after it cooled off a bit. This has just been a weird season of weather for my gardens this year. I have lost plants that had no problem previously. I have lost clematis, strawberry plants, the cucumbers, tomatoes, the corn did badly......and some of my potted plants.

 

[Dave2000]

I am a big fan of an early, short dill season. Well I was, now I have a decade worth for my needs.

The first few weeks of a leafy (eaten) plant you get all those tender sprouts and not so much growth wasted on stems, but you still have to let a few bolt to have seed for next time.

Anyway, here's 3 week old dill that I harvested a week later to reuse the pots for something else. I may just be rambling but everyone likes pictures.

Yes that is a lot of seeds per pot. That is the secret.

 

[digitS']

Doggone it!

I forgot all about putting some cilantro seed in the greenhouse beds by November. It helps for me to look back 6 months or so on TEG and see what I was thinking about ... notes to Evernote might make it easier .

Dave, I don't do dehydration other than couple bunches of herbs hanging in my kitchen. They compete for space with pepper ristras.

There is way more fresh dill each year in the garden than I can make good use of. The plants don't take up much space when they are young and it makes me happy to smell the dill when I'm close to it. Cutting as one might cut opening flowers for a bouquet, prolongs the season. For kitchen purposes, just the freshest branches can be taken.

Steve
who still hasn't tried @Ridgerunner 's technique of cutting cilantro to the ground for regrowth ... i'm always behind the 8ball!

 

[catjac1975]

I seem to be having more trouble these days trying to grow cooler weather herbs. First, the cilantro went to pot.... (pun not intended). I grew some the first year here on our property...back in 2011. It did really good! These past 3 seasons though...not so much. It's been getting hotter...sooner..and the cilantro bolts.
This year, and last, 2013...the dill bolted far too early. I finally just pulled it out of it's container.
Now my curly leafed parsley is jumping ship on me. It was so green and lush...now turned yellow and dying.

I am wondering if perhaps I need to add more soil to the containers to keep them cooler...although..when I had these same plants in the ground, they didn't do any better.

Winters and fall/spring are far too short to try to keep them growing for those seasons. Usually, 2 weeks long is about it.

Cilantro is a short lifespan crop. You need to plant consecutively to keep a supply.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I tried cilantro in volume this past season for the first time. Before that I was growing it mostly for coriander though we'd occasionally use some fresh. I always save my own seeds and sometime I have volunteers.

Last season I sowed an area with a bunch of seed and transplanted about 25 plants into a relatively small area, five or six inches between plants. On the side I let three volunteers go to seed. Glad I did, I got a lot of coriander off of those.

Of the bunch I transplanted, I cut them back to ground level whenever they got to the point that they were about to bolt and send up some larger stems, I cut them to the ground and dehydrated those. They kept coming back, practically all summer. It was a cooler wetter summer than normal and I kept them watered. I think that played a part. Usually my experience is like Cat's, once they grow they quickly go to seed and die. I don't get much leafy stuff off of them either.

A side benefit of having the dried cilantro in the kitchen at all times instead of some fresh for a very short time, my wife now uses it a lot, mainly in tacos.

 

[Dave2000]

Dill, among other things, seems to help repel insects from my other plants nearby, except for some reason monarch butterflies seem to like it. I end up finding one or two monarch caterpillars munching away but nothing else touches it.

I dry it the cheap lazy way, sprawled out on a propped up, clean window screen with a few computer fans blowing across for ~ 4 days... cheap because I have spare computer fans. Powered by old 5V cell phone chargers the airflow is slight enough to not end up with dill blowing everywhere.