Cilantro Seeds Part 1

DSC02770 This cilantro seed bouquet is from our garden.  I took out all of the remaining plants around early June, and let them continue to dry in the house for about three weeks.

DSC03038 I placed t hem into a kitchen garbage bag and hung them for another week and a half or so.   Then I shook them in their bag and crushed them a little to get off easy to remove seeds and left them in t he bag.

DSC03174  After getting off the easy-to-remove seeds, I hand threshed the rest and kept them separate.  I put the stem above into my wood chipping pile outside in order to make mulch from them.

DSC03175 I could separate more seeds from such a mix by swirling, as if panning for gold.

DSC03186 The seeds on the left, which fell off of the stems, and had been cleaned up, appeared to be larger than the seeds on the right, which I had picked off the stems, at least to the naked eye.

DSC03188 I stored them separately, and the seeds on the left, we reasoned, were theoretically better for planting because they were larger, and the seeds on the right, which I pulled off of the stems could be use for coriander seeds.  (We actually do not use coriander seeds very much.)

Young coriander plants are the same as cilantro plants.   All of the plants died after they went to seed, and any cilantro was unavailable.   It looks as if I can keep a bit of coriander growing in the garden at all times, if my saved seeds grow, about which we will see.    I am not sure about  the breeding of the original seeds from which I got the plants from which I got the seeds.  I am not sure about the exact timing and the environmental limits within which the cilantro seeds might grow in our location ranges.

If they do grow, then we might become self-sustaining on cilantro.