Almost the end of the cilantro

We always grow a lot of cilantro in our garden.  Tricia is from South Texas and grew up cooking with the herb being used in lots of Tex Mex dishes like Pico de Gallo, pinto beans, Mexican rice, etc.  It is also a popular herb in Chinese and Indian dishes as well.  We planted it one time, let it go to seed and it self propagates.  Every year around the December - January time frame, lots of cilantro pops up volunteer in our garden.

There is one problem with cilantro.  It bolts.  It wants to flower and produce seeds.  The seeds from a cilantro plant are the spice, coriander.  Anyway, once it flowers, the flavor changes, so you want to harvest prior to the flowering stage.  The photograph below shows cilantro in full bolt.  The big vertical shoots are the stems from which the flowers will soon pop out on.  When the temperature hits 70 degrees, it wants to flower.


Bolting Cilantro

Here is a picture of the flowers of a cilantro plant.  The bees love them and they are pretty to look at, but they signal the end of the cilantro, unless you want to plant again so that your tomatoes and cilantro are ripening at the same time so that you can make pico de gallo!


Flowering Cilantro

So, Tricia and I brought the produce bucket out to the garden to salvage what we could of the cilantro.  We picked and cleaned a bucket full of the pungent smelling, but flavorful herb. 

Bucketful of cilantro

Tricia put it in a colander and washed it up.


Cleaned cilantro

She got out a gallon sized Ziploc freezer bag and heaped the cilantro into the bag.


Bagged Cilantro

And now it is ready to go into the freezer.  As she cooks beans or makes pico de gallo or other dishes that call for it, she'll simply go the the freezer, open the bag, pinch off what she needs, and in this way extend the cilantro harvest for a few more months.


Ready to freeze

Now the garden area that the cilantro was in can be used for something else in the Spring Garden.  Speaking of the Spring garden, we'll be talking more about that in the up-coming week.