Okay, I was smug. Last year I had the perfect crop of coriander. I planted it in spring, and it produced lush and lovely bunches of fragrant ferny foliage till late winter this year. Aha, I thought, I have finally worked out how and where to grow masses of coriander. Give it dappled shade, plenty of water and pick often.
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The only problems last year were that:
a. There is a limit to how much coriander one person can eat
b. My husband hates coriander
c. Everyone I tried to give a bunch to had just bought some from the supermarket. Friends know I am a pretty reliable supplier of lemons, limes, zucchini, rhubarb and much else in season, but I've never before been in a position to train them into saying "I'd love a bunch of coriander if you're passing".
This year I was so in love with coriander growing that I planted both seeds and a punnet of seedlings in the garden, near where the coriander had grown so well last year, plus a second punnet of seedlings in a pot on the windowsill where I could see it from my desk.
The coriander seeds I planted didn't even germinate - either the ants ate them, or they rotted in cool damp soil, or, most likely, the seed wasn't viable.
Coriander seed is usually only viable for two years, which sounds safe, but in practice means it's harvested in mid-summer but not bought till the following year. If you get seed that was packaged a year ago, it may not germinate. There's an easy way to test it - drop it in a glass of water before planting. If it sinks, it's probably viable. If it floats, it probably isn't. I should have done the "float test" before planting.
And the punnets? One of them turned out to be celery, not coriander. In my defence, it said "coriander" on the label and the seedlings were just minute ferny tops, though I thought they did look unusually robust for coriander. The other punnet of more spindly seedlings actually was coriander, and looked gorgeous on the windowsill, till Possum X decided he liked coriander too - not all of it, just a nibble every night. Unusually for Possum X, he left enough for me, to share.
READ MORE: JACKIE FRENCH
Enter the bower bird. The bower bird is a dappled brown green, which may mean it's a female, but I suspect it's a juvenile male, who won't get his glossy dark blue feathers till next year. His behaviour is typical teenage male, pecking at what he thinks are other teenage male bower birds inside the window, pecking back at him. He has already broken two pots, shattering the succulents inside, and left large white and black droppings all along the paving under the windows. Worse, he discovered that standing on my pot of coriander was a perfect position to launch his attacks.
I've now moved my pot with its sole surviving sprig of coriander over to the tap, where it will be watered often, kept in dappled shade, and may possibly recover its lushness. Unless, of course, the wombats or the wallabies decide to eat it.
The next two months are an excellent time to plant coriander. Coriander doesn't grow much in our winter climate, so you need a goodly supply ready to eat by the end of May to see you through the cold months. Choose dappled shade, keep the soil moist, and don't let your coriander get so hot and dry it wilts, or it will bolt to seed. Also feed it well, and mulch, too - the heat reflected from bare soil can trigger coriander to go to seed, too. Note to self: why on earth didn't I save some of the coriander seed?
This year has been a confusing season for many plants, with a long cool spring, a moist cool early summer, and a sudden lurch into heat and several days in a row without rain, just when the garden had got used to a nightly sprinkle and a deluge at least once a week. Even the tomatoes wilt when it hasn't even reached 30 degrees. Wimps.
So this week I am going to hunt for coriander seedlings. If I can't find any, I'll buy more seed - and do the float test. If I do find a punnet of seedlings they will be planted in a cool, dappled shady spot, possibly even with a bit of shade cloth draped over their corner of the garden. And - sorry Possum X, but this year I'm going to barricade them with netting, just in case you decide you want more than a nightly nibble of my coriander.
This week I am:
- Hopefully buying punnets of English spinach as well as coriander, and English spinach seeds too, which I somehow forgot to buy in spring. English spinach doesn't like the heat, but does need to grow well before it stops putting out leaves in winter. We eat lots.
- Picking more tiny zucchini. This really has been a weird year in the garden. Each zucchini has been putting out two or three tiny new fruits each day, smaller than my little finger, delicious cooked whole, steamed or microwaved and stirred into pasta with pesto or just about any other sauce, as baby zucchini are more about texture than taste - they'll take on the flavour of whatever they have been cooked with. But this year the texture is superb. This is possibly the only year I have not complained about zucchini.
- Watching the acanthus that we grow under many of the deciduous trees wilt. Acanthus have glorious spires of white blooms and vivid green foliage for about three or four months all through spring and early summer, and look glorious. Then suddenly both leaves and blooms keel over in the heat and the garden looks a mess. I'll give them another week or two then take the whipper snipper to them, to cut back both flower spires and leaves till the new leaves sprout in early winter.
- Apologising for the stunning clumps of white (non invasive) agapanthus. My husband hates white flowers - why waste space when you could have colour, he says. But even though I have only bought blue aggies, there's always a white joker or two in the pack, and it seems the whites outgrow the blues, dark blues and almost purples. Result? The aggies look fabulous, in mixed blue and white. And to add to the insult, there is a vast, magnificent clump of pure white ones almost glowing, right in front of his shed.
- Rejoicing in the first enormous plate-size white magnolia grandiflora bloom of this summer, with hopefully more to come.
- Separating the clumps of Florentine iris - the white flowering iris whose rhizome is dried for a fixative in perfumes, or was once ground to make a fragrant toothpaste for the rich. I plan to distribute them to friends, and hope they really will be pleased, and not think "Just what I need - something else to plant in this heat".
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Jackie French
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
