An update on the Oman garden is in order. I have reported previously on our harvest of radishes. I thought that the bloggernacling public would also be giddy to learn that we have also begun harvesting spinach. Our lettuce and cilantro is coming along nicely. The tomatoes are in. The peas have begun reaching toward the trellaces that I made. There is still no signs of life from our onion, carrot, cucumber, sunflower, squash, melon, or nesturtium seeds, but we continue to pray over our field (or our 15′ x 20′ patch of earth) and hope for the best. I will keep you informed.
Thank you for the update. I’ll be tuning in regularly. :)
Nate: How do you get cilantro to grow? Mine almost immediately goes to seed and then withers away.
Jim: At this point all I have are small shoots, so mine may wither as well. My understanding is that you need to pull off all of the seeds as soon as they appear if you want to get any sort of leafage. If you leave the seeds on the plants, you get no leaves.
Jim, perhaps you should graft some of Nate’s cilantro onto yours, and plant it in a choice area of your garden, choice above all others, and dig about the cilantro, and nourish it. And lo, the salsa therefrom shall be exceedingly fine.
Cilantro seeds are also known as coriander. Our last attempt at cilantro yielded a decade’s supply, at least. We dumped some in a spare pepper mill in order to have freshly-ground coriander on those two occasions per year when it’s useful. Then again, that was the garden surrounded by cornfields in Illinois in which we couldn’t get corn to grow more than two feet high.
Steve,
Doesn’t that story have a bad ending? I don’t think Nate wants to burn his garden.
Kaimi, such is the law of the harvest. Nate must also be vigilant to keep parsley from growing in the midst of the cilantro.
Wait a minute. I thought Coriander was the last of the Jaredites. Did my seminary teacher lie to me? Horrors!
Steve: My parsley tends to be sickly. It is the mint that you have to watch for.
I was going to talk about fertilization of Coriander plants and Shiz, but …
Jonathan (#5): Your experience shows exactly why I don’t want the seeds. I’d like to grow the leaf and avoid the highway robbery that occurs when I buy cilantro at the grocery.
Nate (#9): I’ve got a huge parsley plant. It is usually bigger and stronger its second year. And though mint goes crazy, it is so easy to pull out that I don’t mind it at all. It keeps the weeds down, and pulling mint is not only easy, it smells great.
Steve (##4, 7): Your advice is welcome, as is your ability to withhold your jealousy of being unable to have a garden. Is “Zenos” perhaps an anagram for “Steve”?
It’s been a long time, but doesn’t Freud say that spinach symbolizes the price we pay for our parents’ love?
No, Zenos is an anagram for Senoz.
Hey, another update–there IS life in the onions and carrots and cucumbers–woo hoo! Fresh veggies, here we come!
Steve and Jim F.,
Of course, Zenos is an anagram for nozes; with which one truly appreciates both cilantro and coriander. . .