Cilantro: my favorite friend and arch nemesis

Oh cilantro. How I love thee, let me count the ways...
Guacamole
On Indian curries
Guacamole
Chipotle's lime cilantro rice
Pico de gallo
Did I already say guacamole?


Unlike some herbs, dried cilantro isn't a thing. (Yes, I am aware that you can buy dried cilantro, but trust me...it's not a thing.)
So having fresh cilantro on hand is always a must. Those bunches from the store go bad so fast before you can use the whole bunch. So growing it fresh would be the ideal right?!

Oh cilantro. How I hate thee, let me count the ways...
Growing outdoors in a pot in the sun
Growing indoors in a pot
Growing outdoors in a pot in the shade
Growing in the Aerogarden

All last about 2-3 weeks ... 2-3 weeks of abundant, fresh cilantro bliss....and then dried, crinkled horror and me crying out why, why, why?!! Why can't I grow you?!!


"Oh cilantro is so hard to grow"
"Yes, cilantro doesn't like the heat"
"It may do ok earlier in the year, but by mid-summer mine always dies"

Well that's encouraging.


So imagine my surprise when in round abouts August (yes, the hottest month of the year) I notice something that looks an awful lot like cilantro growing near my rose bush.
What the...?!!

Yes indeed it was cilantro.
A couple of tufts of tiny-leafed cilantro growing in my fully full sun side of the house bed. In August.

If I recall properly, the year before while we tore down the old and put up the new deck we had moved all of my pots out of the way - onto or near the sidewalk. A few of those pots contained herbs and apparently one of my [failed] attempts at cilantro.

And apparently it seeded itself.
Directly into the ground.


I laughed quite hard. Can't grow it to save my life, but apparently I can accidentally!

So again I enjoyed the bliss of fresh picked cilantro for at least a month or more; cranked out a bunch of guacamole until decent avocados became hard to come by and so my neglected cilantro went to seed. Well, it was a fun surprise while it lasted.



Enter a walk around back during a warm December day.

Um...what is that?

It's not one or two tufts, but essentially a ground cover of cilantro!!

In December.

I give up.

Through frost and even several back to back days below freezing and still my new crop - field - survived and was utilized. I kept thinking that surely after this last big freeze it was a goner, but I'd go out and pick some and smell it and still fresh and delightful!


Now after a record-setting 30" of snow, and several days back to back getting down into the teens and not above freezing, there's no way it can still be ok, right?

Meet the new my-yard-accidentally-created version of the hardiest cilantro you will ever meet. Survives the intensest heat of summer and coldest freeze of winter.
There's only one secret - DON'T TRY TO HELP IT!

Just let it go and pick as much as you need.

The Magical Canna

Here's one of my favorite garden "mishaps"...

Two springs ago we were in Lowe's and a section of summer bulbs caught our eye. So we stopped and browsed. One that we liked was a Canna Lily.

Beautiful red, tropical-looking flowers; grows well in containers, but we want them for the beds; full sun; gets to about 36 inches tall. Great! Sounds perfect for the front beds!

There were supposed to be four, but we only got three large, oddly shaped tubers in the bag. We planted them in both of the front beds. We waited in eager anticipation and finally started to see the greens peek through the dirt!

We watched them grow and leaves started to unfurl and then eventually little buds appeared and yet they continued to grow...and grow...and grow!

Here's what our "Grows up to 36 inches" looked like after 3 months:

In fact, once they hit the 7-8' range we discussed how unlikely we thought it was that we would have purchased something that said it would get that tall. I consulted the packaging and that's when we realized the "up to 36 inches" part. 

Well then.

I mean, they are beautiful (and are what finally brought hummingbirds to our yard!), but they may have been a bit much for the front of the house!

We finished building our 2nd story deck that fall and I decided that these would look incredible growing alongside the railing and so I pulled up the tubers after the frost.

Um. Remember how we started with 3 tubers?

I think I may have enough.


So I dried them and put them in our little storage room.
Because we don't have a garage or basement we really don't have a 40-45 degree place to store bulbs.

Come spring-time some of them seemed a little rotted and since I had plenty I threw several in the compost bin and planted several in pots and about half a dozen along the stair railing just waiting for our incredible 8' tall canna plants - but this time in a place that would be perfect for them to grow that big!

Well figures that they only got up to about 5' or less this time (the edibles garden only gets a few hours of sun in the morning throughout the spring whereas when they were in the front they got the intense afternoon sun that they must love as tropical flowers).

But they were abundant in one way....they grew.

I mean all of them.

Next thing I know I've got what are very obviously cannas growing out of my compost bin (which is in full and complete shade, by the way).
So I pulled a few tubers out of the bin and re-planted them along the stairs filling in the gaps I'd left in my spring planting.
And then more would pop up in the compost bin! Are you kidding me?!!
I started giving them away to friends and co-workers.

And the final accidental craziness was the small piece I'd missed about how new plants can grow out of both ends of the tuber...and sometimes out of the fingers in between.

So I started off with 6 plants spaced a couple of feet apart.
I filled in the gap with some "composted" tubers and so most ended up being more like 1 foot apart.
And then plants shot out both ends.

The result was a spectacular hot mess of clustered canna plants that did look great and of course the hummingbirds love them.

(This is taken from above)

The ones in the pots actually did seem to do better then the ones in the ground.

Lessons learned?

Cannas are like rabbits.

Other than that, well not a whole lot. They do like intense afternoon sun, apparently...or was it worse soil in the back? Or that they weren't fresh bulbs? Or that I started them too early? Or....?


Well I pulled a bunch of them inside again in the fall, so we shall soon see how the 2016 crop does!
(I also did an experiment where I left some in the ground and am very curious to see if those come up; they aren't supposed to in this region, but it was worth a try since I had so many. It's also been a very, wonderfully mild winter. Crossing my fingers!)

Meet The Accidental Gardener...

Welcome to my adventure!

A little about me...

I grew up in the Midwest helping my Dad make our just under an acre yard beautiful. Many old, tall trees, woods on several sides; it was marvelous! And we lived next door to a professional landscaper who helped design beautiful areas and we filled in every year with annuals. I grumbled as a kid having to plant "hundreds" of plants, but as I got older and Dad started taking me to the nurseries and letting me have some say in arrangements, I began to look forward to the annual Spring plant. We would spread out the plants, pots, soil and tools and create masterpieces all day...and into the night if necessary! And the result was worth it: our yard was a paradise.

When I moved to Maryland and into my husband's apartment, our "gardens" were a few potted plants which I proceeded to kill with rapidity.

In 2012 we bought a house on 0.17 acres which had been vacant for about 3 years. This meant the yard was an absolute blank slate. I dreamed of hiring a professional to create a cohesive, gorgeous plan (hearkening back to my youth and having a lot to live up to!) that we would then execute. However once I started pricing this option with landscape designers that dream died quickly.

My husband convinced me it would be fun to create the landscape plan ourselves anyway. I was skeptical. But so began my research and incredibly unprofessional "Ten Year Plan". (Largely in my head and on scratched out lists; not really an actual sketched out plan!)

Starting from complete scratch as the most amateur gardener alive (as in, "Which one comes up year after year: annual or perennial?") was daunting, but once we had a very basic first plan for just one of our gardens, I began to agree with husband that it really was more rewarding to plan it yourself.

Since then it's been adding a little more each year. We're sort of garden obsessed now.

I've discovered that I love gardening. It is incredibly relaxing and rewarding in a way that I do not get from indoor housework. Working in an office 40+ hours a week, I find that I don't even mind the weeding part of gardening! It gets me outside and I soak in sun and the smells of dirt and plants and just enjoy the beauty that I'm trying to encourage.

So I sound like I totally know what I'm doing now, right?

Weeeeell...do I know a thousand times more than I did 3 years ago? Oh my, yes. Are my gardens thriving and producing and abundant? Well...yes and no.

And that's where the inspiration for this blog came in: through joking that when I try to make something grow, it dies and yet there are things popping up all over that were totally an accident.

So I invite you on the story of my journey in gardening and the hilarious mishaps and happy accidents that happen along the way!