Sowing Coriander

[hopalong]

It's usually heat or erratic watering that makes coriander bolt. Keep it in partial shade & don't allow it to dry out between watering. Transplanting can sometimes stress the plant & cause it to bolt so it's best sown in situ.

You can get slow bolting varieties of coriander. Alternatively you could grow Culantro (Eryngium Foetidum) which looks completely different but tastes very similar although a lot stronger. Culantro is not quite as versatile as you only use the leaf unlike coriander where you can use the leaf, root & seeds but it still comes in very useful & it's a perennial so you don't need to resow each year unless we have a particularly cold winter. The other alternative if you can find it is Vietnamese Coriander (Persicaria Odorata, syn. Polygonum Odoratum) which looks more like mint but tastes similar to coriander, not quite the same flavour but very close. You rarely see seeds for sale as it doesn't often produce any but can often find plants. It's a fast growing perennial but it does need protecting from frost in the winter, a single frost was all it took to kill mine last year.

thanks baccyman, yes i think mine get stressed on transplanting and will plan to sow a next set in situ both in the vege beds as edging and some in the herb bed to encourage self seeding.

The Eryngium Foetidum that you mention i cal shaow beni and it grows like a weed in my country, i have grown it here once before in 2003 and it did beautifully outside as it was a scorching summer, i still have some seed maybe i'll grow some this year.

i have been given two rooted cuttings of Vietnamese coriander which are doing well on my kitchen window so i have these as a fall back

As baccyman says, Vietnamese Coriander does have a quite different - but very agreeable - taste. I've found it to be prolific and, as long as you remember to bring it indoors for the winter and repot it occasionally, it survives and flourishes year after year.

[hopalong]