Bolting Cilantro
Early lessons from an emerging gardener
Gardening is something I think everyone should do—or at least try. The process of growing a plant from a seed that you can eat is something magical.
My interest in gardening came by way of composting after reading Rivka Galchen’s New Yorker article about how South Korea composts 95% of its food waste. At the time, New York City was in the midst of its on-again, off-again curbside composting program, and I was curious to learn more about it as a mode of sustainability. I also just wanted an excuse to be outside.
This led me to Red Hook Farms—a 2.75-acre organic farm in South Brooklyn across from an IKEA. In addition to providing education, employment, and affordable produce to local residents, the farm also served as one of the city’s official compost processing sites. Under the farmers’ guidance, I learned how to combine, turn, and sift compost—a massive undertaking at the scale they do it. The piles would start six feet tall and gradually shrink in both height and texture, eventually breaking down from thick clumps into fine, dark dust.
The more shifts I attended, the more I got to do around the farm. I weeded, tilled, picked—whatever was needed that day. The work was hard and obviously physical but so satisfying. I looked at these experiences as training wheels for what I hoped I’d be able to do on my own someday.
After a couple summers of volunteering, I moved to an apartment much farther away, making it unrealistic to keep volunteering at Red Hook. The new place had a backyard, which I saw as a chance to put my lessons into practice. The previous tenants even left a composting tumbler in the yard—a sign from the universe.
We moved in during winter, so the only thing I could do at first was set up a composting system, which was a colossal failure. I hardly added any browns, so my ratio was entirely too nitrogen-rich. By spring, I basically had a drum full of black sludge that smelled like shit. That season didn’t get much better either. The tomato plants produced maybe half a dozen flavorless tomatoes, and the herbs and lettuces barely got more than a few inches tall.
Something you can only learn by gardening is that when you fuck up your garden, you have to wait an entire year to try again. It’s not like you can just scrap it and start over. You have to sit in your shame for the rest of the summer and make stew out of those mistakes through the winter. In my case, what I learned was: I planted the herbs too late in the season; the soil the tomatoes were planted in was not nutrient-rich (because I had no usable compost); and I should collect the leaves when they fall in autumn to add more browns to improve said compost.
By spring of the following year, I had come (more) correct. My compost was light, crumbly, and smelled delicious. I set up the beds and pots with healthy soil, and planted the seeds early.
It was a slow start at first, and after a few weeks I started to worry that this year might be a sad rerun. But at some point I noticed a couple tiny green blades poking through the dirt. The pessimist in me was convinced they were weeds, but I just kept watering. Despite pesky squirrels digging holes in the dirt trying to torpedo my operation, more green emerged, dotting the entire length of the beds, and I knew something was happening.
The summer turned out to be one of abundance. Charged with the superfood I’d been churning all winter, everything exploded, and it gave me great gratification to use what I was growing in the kitchen: mixing cilantro into guacamole; garnishing pastas with fresh parsley and basil; and adding tomatoes and dill to a salad. It appeared that winter would be the only thing that could stop this self-replenishing system.
But as it got really hot, I noticed the cilantro leaves shrinking. The dill too. I tasted one, and it was bitter. I looked it up and learned this was part of the plant’s natural life cycle—bolting—which happens when the temperature gets too high and the plant goes to seed, prioritizing reproduction over leafy growth. I knew the crop wouldn’t last forever, but the peak of summer felt premature, and I’d have to wait another year to try again.
What I later learned from more experienced gardeners is that herbs are generally a pain to maintain outdoors. You do, however, get one more shot to plant them toward the end of summer, as the temperature drops, using the seeds the plants produce. And in the case of cilantro—aka coriander—you can even use those seeds in recipes. The season, in other words, was not a failure.
Gardening, as it turns out, is less about triumph than it is tolerance: of heat, of pests, of your own incompetence. There’s no real end—just a series of small wins, slow deaths, and a vague hope that next year might be slightly better.