Corainder Seeds

If you've been reading our blog you're realise we've had abit of a non-Coriander year this year. When I say non-Corainder, that's abit of a fib, not completely, I mean we do have some Coriander, just not really edible Corainder. Our plant was looking wonderfully healthy but still a little on the small side so we decided to leave it a couple of weeks so it could flesh out a little and wouldn't mind being munched by us so much and in that time it decided it would run to seed. Ho hum... well not as bad as it sounds becuase Coriander seeds can still be used in cooking, particularly in middle-eastern receipes, curries and the like. Super.

It seems we harvest the seeds when they're just starting to turn to brown, cut the stem at the base of the plant and hang upside down in a brown paper bag until the seeds have dried then you can just shake them off the plant.

So all is not lost.

Flowering Coriander

Oh dear... this isn't what Coriander is meant to look like, is it?! Well I've just being doing a little research into it and this is what I found out.

• It's actually an annual plant so will usually germinate, flower, and die in one year
• It has a tendency to run to seed if stressed; this is where it flowers prematurely and develops seeds instead of growing lush foliage.
• It also doesn't like full sun as the heat triggers it to seed, I guess the incredibly hot past two weeks haven't helped then....

Oh what a shame, we were waiting for the plant to get abit more foilage before we started to pick at it but instead we've just waited too long and it's seeding. I've read in a couple of places that you can cut it right back which may help or alternatively we could collect the seeds as they can be used in cooking too.

We've got another 4/5 plants growing that are only small at the moment so maybe we'll use this one for seeds.