Long Coriander (Culantro)

An Intro to Long Coriander

MY STATUS: Unsuccessful   

Long Coriander or Mexican Coriander, originated in Central and South America, where it is more commonly known as culantro. It belongs to the same family as cilantro and tastes and smells almost exactly the same, but stronger. There are important differences beyond its radically different appearance; it's a perennial in the tropics, grows from a central rosette instead of a stem, and, most importantly, thrives in the heat and humidity of the tropics where cilantro languishes and goes to seed before you can even get a good harvest out of it. The herb is grown widely throughout the Caribbean, South America, Southeast Asia, and India (and now commercially on Guam). I've tried cilantro on Pohnpei and gotten it to grow okay but not great. A friend on Pohnpei tipped me off to this amazing tropical alternative, so I ordered up some seeds from Puerto Rico.

PROLONGED LIFE

While culantro behaves like an annual in temperate climates (because it doesn't like cold), it will go on growing and producing leaves as long as the weather stays warm.

PARTIAL SHADE

Though not as finicky as cilantro, Long Coriander grows best in partial shade, so keep this one out of the direct equatorial sun.

MOIST, NOT WET

Long Coriander likes its soil continually most, but not waterlogged. You can water it as you do with plain parsley.

VERY DIFFICULT TO START & VERY SLOW-GROWING

This herb has the reputation of being a slow-starter, sometimes taking more than 20 days to germinate (if it germinates at all). Apparently, the seeds don't preserve well. If they get a little humid or aren't kept cool, they die. Ordering seeds then is probably not going to result in much success as they would be unrefridgerated for quite some time in transit.

FEED IT

Long Coriander can handle poor soil, but since it is grown for its leaves, there's nothing wrong with loading it up with plenty of nitrogen. It will keep putting out more and more greenery, and you can harvest individual leaves as needed.

What I Did

DAY 1 - SOWING

I started off with a packet of seeds purchased on Amazon.com from Tropical Island Seeds in Puerto Rico. I sowed the seeds in paper egg carton cups filled with moist potting soil. Since this plant doesn't have deep roots and spreads horizontally, I plan to transplant into a long, shallow rectangular pot.

DAY 23

No luck so far. My seed cups remain empty. Not one seed has germinated. I was warned that culantro is a slow-starter, but I honestly didn't expect it would take this long. I'm wondering if the seeds spent too much time in transit to Pohnpei or in storage once they got here. Our postal service is pretty terrible; frequently things arrive here and then sit in the back of the postal building for weeks before someone decides to sort them out and deliver to the PO boxes. Letting seeds sit at room temperature never helps anything. Maybe there's still hope.

DAY 40 - FAILURE TO LAUNCH

My first attempt to germinate this damn species has ended in failure. Not one seed sprouted.

ATTEMPT #2

DAY 1 - SOWING

I was able to consult a buddy here who has some mature culantro in his container garden. He told me about how notoriously difficult it is to start this plant, and then gave me seeds straight off his plant and instructed me to sprinkle them on damp soil and then keep everything inside a Tupperwear container to prevent the soil from drying out. If the soil becomes dry even once, he said, the seeds are as good as dead. I did exactly as he said. We'll see what happens.

DAY 35 - NOTHIN' DOIN'

Well, it looks like these guys may not work out for me. My second attempt has had similar results as the first. No germination and this time I got mold growth on the soil. I may try again at some point, but for now, on to other things. I sure do miss that cilantro flavor in my cooking, though!

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Cilantro (Chinese Parsley)

An Intro to Cilantro

MY STATUS: Grown Successfully to Harvest

LIGHT, BUT NOT HEAT

Regular cilantro is not well-suited to Pohnpei's hot, wet climate. Though the plant needs lots of light (at least 4 hours a day), it hates heat. Lots of heat makes the plants stop growing and go to seed--not good if the whole purpose of growing is get leaves for lots of yummy salsa and Mexican food. So it needs to be shaded in the hottest parts of the afternoon, especially when young.

RICH, BALANCED SOIL

Cilantro likes good, balanced soil with plenty of compost and manure. It does not tolerate transplantation well, so seeds should be sown in their final resting place.

MOIST, BUT NOT WET

Plants need regular water when young; the soil should be moist but not wet. Watering should be done at the base of the plant as much as possible. However, on extremely hot days, you can cool the plants down my misting their leaves with ice water. As the plant gets older, it needs less water.

GROWTH AND HARVEST

You can start harvesting leaves when the plants are a few inches tall. Removing any flowering spikes that develop will prevent bolting and encourage leaf growth. It's useful to understand how the plant develops. Branches will start forming just above the cotyledons as the true leaf stems lengthen. This means that the weight of all the branches and leaves will be born by the single stem. If you have good, consistent light without the heat, then your stem might come out stocky and strong. If not, the stems will be tall and weak and the plants will likely fall over if you don't do something drastic.

DAY 1 - SOWING

Not realizing cilantro hates transplantation, I planted my seeds in several paper egg cups filled with garden soil. Oops. What I should have done is directly seeded the pots where I planned to grow my cilantro plants.

DAY 7 - GERMINATION

My cilantro seeds began to sprout up early in the morning one week after I put them in soil. Some seedlings were a half-inch tall by evening (below).

DAY 9 - TRANSPLANTATION

If you do things right, you won't have this step in your process. Cilantro has fragile roots and the seedlings are delicate. If you try to transplant, most won't survive. I didn't know all this until after I seeded. Since I'd screwed up, I experimented with two batches of seedlings.

For Batch 1, I pricked out the individual seedlings as I would have with any other plant. They were planted a couple of inches apart in a large pot. If you do this, plant the seedlings deep with the cotyledons immediately above the soil.

For Batch 2, I cut out the bottoms of each paper seed cup and planted them right in the soil (left) without disturbing the roots of the seedlings. The assumption was that this would stress the plants less and the roots would simply push through the damp paper when they were ready. Note how leggy my seedlings are. This is not a good thing. It means they aren't getting enough sun and are stretching to reach the light, making them spindly and weak.

SOIL PREPARATION & PLANTING:

• I put the cilantro in two pots--one about 2 gallons and the other about a 1/2 gallon. Again, experimentation is the game.
• As with all my pots, I started with a 1-inch layer of coarse basalt gravel.
• I added a layer of steer manure.
• I filled the rest of the space with a mixture of 25% local soil, 25% store-bought garden soil, and 50% Miracle Grow Potting Mix.

DAY 15 - TRUE LEAVES

The first true leaves are opening on most of the plants by the end of the second week. The seedlings that were planted while still in their egg cups, are much taller, but those planted singly are stronger and have much greater leaf development, some already with fully open leaves.

DAY 16

All plants have fully open true leaves (right). It's starting to look like the pricked out plants are actually doing better. They are shorter and more able to carry the weight of their leaves and branches.

DAY 17

While the pricked out seedlings are doing okay, the ones planted in their cups have become so leggy that they were falling over--unable to support the weight of their leaves. I rigged up some sticks to give the plants a little more support. I also thinned out some of the smaller plants. I think the problem of legginess has to do with the buried egg cups preventing the roots of the seedlings from getting down deeper into the soil, where they could better support the plant. Remember--don't do what I did with either batch. Seed your pots directly to avoid all this transplantation nonsense.

DAY 24

The pricked out cilantro continues to look healthy, but growth has slowed to a crawl. The egg cup cilantro is increasingly thin and tall and continues to topple over (above). Not good. I was worried that the sun here was too intense. Cilantro needs lots of sun, but doesn't like heat. Unfortunately, heat and sun go together near the equator.

DAY 26

All plants have hit a plateau. They aren't growing any thicker or taller, though they do seem to be putting out leaves. If they stay out too long in direct sunlight, they wilt, which probably means they have poorly developed, shallow roots. It is possible I also over-watered them and caused dampening off--a root fungus.

DAY 28

I trimmed off the tallest parts of all the plants to force them to put more energy into the thickness of their stems.

ROUND 2:  LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN . . .

DAY 1

I bought a few packets of cilantro seeds at Pohnpei Ace Hardware and thickly reseeded both of my pots, leaving the original plants where they were. I also fertilized both pots with Alaska Fish Emulsion.

DAY 7

The second seeding has begun to germinate in one of the two pots.

DAY 12

Both pots are full of seedlings now and they are close enough together that they are helping to support each other as well as the more mature plants. For this reason, I'm not thinning anything out. Also, I very carefully added soil around all the seedlings and more established plants, so that now their stems are mostly underground. This is helping them stay upright. The older plants have lots of branches and leaves now, but everything is still pretty stunted--probably because of how hot it is here.

DAY 17

Finally, things are better. I wouldn't say my cilantro is thriving, but it's plugging along. It's no longer falling over and looking like it's about to die out. I won't get a huge harvest, but I'll have a little. No sign of bolting so far, which is good (and surprising). Adding dirt really helped the stability of the plants. The older ones have a lot of leaf and branch growth.

DAY 31

We've had six straight days here in Kolonia with not even a peep of sun. For most of my plants, that's not wonderful, but it has given me an opportunity to see how the cilantro would do in cooler, overcast weather. And the answer to that is--amazingly! My cilantro seems to love a cloudy, sunless Pohnpei. In a week, the whole character of these plants has changed. They are almost as tall and bushy as the parsley (below right: cilantro in background and foreground and parsley in the middle), which has done great from the very beginning. Not thinning the seedlings has proved to be hugely beneficial. My plants support each other now, no longer falling over. Adding soil around the stems also added to this new success. Both my pots are thick and full and luscious. I have plenty of leaves now to make a batch of salsa without chopping everything to the ground.

DAY 44

After a combined 72 days of growth, one botched run and several disastrous mistakes, I think I can finally say that the cilantro has been a success and the plant can be ticked off the list. Two batches of delicious salsa so far isn't too bad and my big pot is still doing well (though, I did kill off the smaller one by accident).

SO . . .

Can cilantro be grown on Pohnpei? 
Yes, it can.

Can it do well enough to be of use?
Yes, it can.

Will it thrive? 
Not likely, but it will do fine if given the proper care.

I'll continue to post notes as long as I keep growing the plants. So far, I haven't had any problems with bolting, the plants have stayed fairly small but produced plenty of foliage, and I'm able to do a nice harvest about every two weeks.

Here's what they look like as of today (below).

And here's what the salsa looked like (below). Mmmmm....

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