Really Obvious Cold Season Kitchen Herbs
Even among somewhat seasoned food growers, there is an unending confusion around the efficacy of growing certain foodstuffs in the wintertime around these parts. The short and incontrovertible answer to it all is that you can grow a magnificently diversified magnitude of practical plants from October through March, easily, with little to no fear of (short) frosts. We’re presently going to highlight some very basic and obvious cooking herbs that not only can be grown through the cold season, but actually prefer the cold season in order to become their best selves.
CILANTRO
As a plant seller I am constantly having to explain to customers why I don’t have cilantro throughout the spring and summer. And it’s obvious and real and true: It’s just not a hot weather plant. This can be hard for the myopically unworldly mind to handle, as Mexico is south of us and presumably hotter and a chief consumer and producer of cilantro. The thing is, cilantro is a warm weather plant, and sensitive to actual cold, but will wilt and bolt as soon as it is confronted with the tropically oppressive climes of the Southeast flatlands. But there are plenty of parts of Mexico where the heat is not nearly so hot as here and cilantro is born to be loved and consumed.
Growing It
First of all, cilantro should be planted, by seed or start, between September and January. The cooler the weather, the longer your plant will last, the more productive it will be, and the tastier it will be as well. It is best grown very compactly. Usually if you buy it at a nursery you will actually be buying a bunch of plants in one small container. Don’t bother separating them when you plant them, they are happier like this. Cilantro grows quickly and can be harvested regularly. The easiest way to get the goods while guaranteeing future success is to grab a bunch of the older, taller growth, and then just snip it off, like giving the plant(s) a cute little haircut. There should be new leaf growth popping up under the old plants whenever you snip. If you’re growing in line with the seasons, expect a cilantro plant to live four to six months. If it lives shorter than this, it’s probably your fault. But if it makes it at least four months, you’ve done nothing wrong and it is so perfectly normal.
Using It
When cilantro bolts, it’s fairly obvious. Also, as with most plants that bolt, this marks the beginning of the end for cilantro. The stalks get super long and the leaves turn into ornate, oblong snowflakey-not-at-all-cilantro-looking things. Whether you have the “cilantro tastes like soap” gene or not, cilantro will taste like soap once it has bolted. Do not bother to try using it. There is a winning alternative situation here that is very much worth keeping your plant alive for, if you’re into that sort of thing. Fresh coriander seeds are incredibly fun to cook with. Also yes, a bizarrely little known fact considering how common both cilantro and coriander are in American culinary traditions, coriander and cilantro are one plant, or rather, at least the leafy part and the seedy part of the same plant. So pull those bright green balls hanging at the top of your aging cilantro plant to your heart’s content and find fun uses for them. If you aren’t interested in fun, you can still collect them and leave them to dry and use them like plain-old regular boring yet extremely useful and well-known dried coriander.
DILL
You know it, you love it; and if you don’t, you owe it to yourself to try again and see if maybe your taste buds have grown up a little since last you visited it. If you do like it but don’t grow it and don’t grow anything at all, start growing it. A dill plant probably costs $4 at the absolute most, and those tiny little packets of fresh dill at the grocery store cost more than that, and there’s no way you’re going to use the whole thing before it dies. So even if you fail miserably at growing it, you probably still got extremely more bang for your buck and it was fresher to boot just for trying. You owe it to yourself to grow dill.
Growing It
Like cilantro, dill has an inevitably short lifespan. It will likely bolt after three to four months, and that’s OK! If you have the luxury of growing it in a bed and aren’t painfully OCD about the fresh newness of what goes into your garden season by season—if you let it go to seed—dill will put out so many seeds into your soil and you will almost inevitably have fresh dill growing in your yard all year long if you let the darling babies fulfill their natural life cycle. Unlike cilantro, dill actually can grow all year long around these parts. That said, it is more likely to die prematurely in the warmer months, and is definitively tastier in the colder months. THAT said, also unlike cilantro, even while it is in its bolting phase, dill is still a tasty herb that very much still emanates proper dill flavor, just a little bit more pungently. So use dill its whole life long, short as it may be.
Using It
When it comes to cutting dill, you will simply want to cut from the outside, using older stalks first, and leaving the newer stalks in the middle to keep on keeping on. Also, be sure to cut the entire stalk rather than pulling off the little fronds that you need, or just cutting off the leafy bits and leaving the stalk. That stalk will not produce any more leaves, but it will suck nutrients from the rest of the plant, slowing growth and stunting the new leaves you want. Also, if you are one of those people who doesn’t love dill I addressed earlier and are actually giving it a shot: A little bit of dill goes a long way. Love her right, and she will change your life.
PARSLEY
Like kale, somewhere in the ‘70s the collective American conscious decided this herb only existed curly, and was not meant for consumption, but only to make steaks look slightly healthier in corporate fine dining establishments. We have since come around and most people understand kale and parsley both are extremely healthy plants and an alimentary pleasure to consume as well.
Growing It
Parsley, like cilantro, is also an utterly cool season crop, no matter where in the world you are. It is used in stews and soups and with meats for good reason. As such, it is utterly unprepared for New Orleans type summers, but can deal with the worst cold this climate has to offer without issue. As soon as the weather warms, its immune system will collapse and all manner of insect will start eviscerating your parsley plant. So though it is technically a biennial, making parsley last more than a season is out of the question. If you can make a parsley plant go to seed in the Southeast, please never listen to a word I’ve ever said again—it is my turn to listen, forevermore.
Using It
Soups, stews, meats. A single parsley plant turns into something of a miniature bush all by its lonesome and should be more than enough to provide you with the hearty nourishment addendum you seek in your wintry dinner delights. You will again want to harvest from the outside, at the base of the stem of any given grouping of leaves. Also, know that while parsley is a somewhat moderately flavored herb on the flavorful herb spectrum, freshly harvested parsley leaves pack a hugely flavorful punch, and a baby curly bunch on the side of a 1989 steak plate’s worth of flat leaf parsley is more than enough to exponentially contribute to the power of your cottagecore cozy dish.
Just because it’s slightly cold outside doesn’t mean your home garden needs to be ignored and left alone in a windy tundra of desolate despair. If you’re cold, your dirt’s cold. Give it something to shelter and grow so it can feel alive and important in the universe, and so too can you!
If you’ve got questions for the Dirt Nerd, feel free to email ian@hotplantsnursery.com or visit @hotplantsnursery.
illustrations by Rachel Speck
