Success with Coriander 香菜

Coriander is my favourite herb, yet I’d never had luck growing them well in my own garden; with the 2 varieties of seeds I bought from a garden Centrum, they either produce little leaves or set seeds too quickly.

This June, I obtained some seeds from a friend of mine who received his seeds from China. I want to do everything correct this time with these seeds. I first went online to search for tips on how to grow corianders successfully. To grow them well, I need: well-drained humus soil, a sunny and open site (a friend told me, she grew them in the shade with success), and (during the growing season) moist soil but not over water the plants. Armed with the info, I set myself out to work. I started off by building myself a raised bed with timber. The raised bed was 120 cm /70 cm / 15 cm in size. I then filled the raised bed with 2 parts of garden ground, 1 part of garden compost and 1 part of all-purpose potting compost. I sowed the seeds in drills on the 30th of June. The seeds germinated 10 days later. From then on, I kept the soil moist, this was not difficult to do since July was a wet month, and I had to water the seedlings occasionally. By the 27th of July, the seedlings had grown into 15 cm tall plants. From the 2nd of August on, I was able to harvest lots of green shoots daily to use in the kitchen.

I had never in my wildest dreams expected my corianders to be this abundant! They were strong, they were leafy, they did not bolt at all, and they were just gorgeous. I kept picking, giving them away to friends; we even made dumplings with corianders. I’m so very grateful of the friend who made my coriander dream come true by giving me the wonderful seeds. I could not hide my happiness. I did it this time!

Lessons learnt: sow them in successions every 2 to 3 weeks to ensure longer harvesting.