Cilantro

• Type: cool season annual
• Planting time: early spring, fall
• Features: aromatic leaves, flavorful seeds
• Height: 12 to 24 inches
• Light: full sun
• Soil: light, moist but well drained
• Spacing: 12 to 18 inches
• Plant Size: 1 to 2 feet tall, 1 foot wide
• Garden use: in containers, herb and flower gardens
• Culinary use: leaves & seeds in Mexican, Carribean or Asian dishes

If you like the aromatic flavor of salsa served in Mexican restaurants, you'll like cilantro. The leaves have an instantly recognizable fragrance that fills a room when you cut them. Also called Chinese parsley, its distinctive aroma and flavor is also part of Caribbean and Asian foods, lending flavor to recaito, salsas, curries, salads, chutneys, herbed butters, and meat marinades.

Cilantro looks like flat leaf Italian parsley, but the leaves are thinner. It grows in a rosette of stemmy leaves that are ready to harvest shortly after planting. Young leaves have the best flavor, encouraging you to harvest often. It is a fast-growing annual except in milder climates where it will overwinter. Cilantro grows tall and blooms at the end of its life, usually after the weather gets hot. After it blooms, harvest the seeds. They are what you buy in spice jars as coriander, a common ingredient in Asian cooking. You can grind them or use them whole. Some gardeners also let the seeds drop to make new plants.

Fall is a great time to grow cilantro in mild climates as the plants love the cool weather in fall, winter, and early spring.

Some Bonnie Plants varieties may not be available at your local stores, as we select and sell varieties best suited to the growing conditions in each region.