Suburban Tomato

I find coriander quite a  frustrating crop to grow.  My first issue is that its near impossible to grow it here for much of the year.  It is slow to establish, bolts quickly, wont germinate, gets eaten by slugs and snails and is generally too hard to bother with a lot of the time.  The exception is during winter.  Winter (and early Spring) is the best time to grow coriander in Melbourne.  Which is annoying really when you consider that you don’t have lovely things like tomatoes (which marry well with coriander) during winter.

I try and sow my coriander monthly from late Autumn when it is still warm enough to germinate.  I sow it indoors in winter moving it outside as soon as it germinates.   This year I been growing “SuperHarvest” which I am finding much the same as my previous variety “Slow Bolting”.

Lately I have been sowing my coriander in seed trays to keep it safer from the slugs and snails which seem to delight in decimating my seedlings which I sow direct in the ground.  Coriander does self seed nicely from time to time and when it does I find the seedlings are considerably stronger than any I sow regardless of whether I sow direct or in punnets.

I use coriander in a variety of things.  The leaves I use in salsas, guacamole, curries and salads.  The roots I tend to use when making Thai curry paste.  If you haven’t tried using them before I would recommend them.  They have a lovely coriander flavour which does dissapate nearly as quickly when cooked compare with the leaves.

Do you find much variation between coriander varieties?

Saturday Spotlight is a series of posts highlighting particular varieties of edible plants.  If you have a favourite, or even a less than successful variety of a plant and would like to include it in the series then please leave a comment with a link below.    I have created a page (above, just below the header) with an Index of all the Spotlights to date.   I will add links to any new posts below and in next weeks post as well as ensuring they appear in the Index.  

New posts from last week:

“Millionaire” Eggplant – Our Happy Acres

Savoy Cabbage – Garden Glut

Purple Sicily Cauliflower – Home Sweet Kitchen

and from this week:

“Hollow Crown” Parsnips – Garden Glut