Culantro is more than a simple plant. It is a herb that has its origin in Central, South America, and Mexico. It is a herb that is used all over the world. Its leaves have flavor. It has different names. Some of them are charbon beni, cilantro de monte, Mexican coriander, and sneki wiwiri.
It has a very strong flavor and when you use it as a herb you should use small quantities. It belongs to the same family, and it looks like cilantro does but it isn’t the same one. Most cuisines around the world use the leaves when they cook. Thai cuisine uses not only the leaves but also the roots as well.
Below we are going to talk about how you can plant and grow this plant. Apart from that, we are going to give you tips about ways that you can use culantro’s and the benefits that it has to our health. Let’s see how we can plant it.
Culantro And Its Medicinal Value
Apart from the world of cooking, culantro is also used in medicines. You can use it by making your own tea that you can drink it for your stomach, colds and the flues. It will relieve you when you have a stomach ache or vomiting.
It can also help with asthma, it lowers the blood pressure, and it helps with epileptic seizures. It has a calming effect and it soothes away the seizures. It also soothes away the headaches when you drink its tea.
You can also use the juice of the leaves if you have been stung by a scorpion. You can also infuse the leaves into water and create your tea. You can add mint or ginger to give an extra taste.
It can be used for anemia too. You can infuse 7 leaves in 1 liter of water. You can drink one cup, three times a day. This should last for about 10 days. Anemia is the reduction of red blood cells.
What is great about this plant is that it contains vitamins such as C, B1, B2, A, calcium, and iron which will make you feel better and will increase the defenses of your organism.
Finally, it can be used as an antidepressant. Exactly, you read very well. Chop and cook the leaves for 10 minutes, add them in 1 liter of water and drink it during the day. It contains sterols and flavonoids that will immediately make you feel better.
How To Plant Culantro?
It is best to be planted in the spring. It won’t grow well in cold temperatures. A good way to protect it would be to plant it during the spring, and later on to cut off the flower stalk and in this way it might survive through the winter.
The particular plant is small with long leaves that reach up to 8 inches long. It will best grow to zones from 8 to 11. A good idea would be to use a pot and plant the seeds there are about 8 weeks before the spring starts. In this way, you will be able to place them in your garden when spring begins.
Culantro needs warm soil and it needs a lot of sun to grow. If you are going to plant more than one then make sure to leave 8 to 12 inches between them. Before you place them in the soil you should add compost in order to give them a good start.
You should also fertilize it every couple of weeks. Even though it requires a lot of sun to grow, it grows well too when there is partial shade. In the partial shade, the leaves of culantro tend to grow larger and tender.
What is great about this plant is that it can grow very well in containers too. You can grow a single plant or use containers in order to place more than one plant. You should fertilize the soil every week and again you should read the instructions.
Harvest
You can start harvesting culantro when the plant is 3 months old. You have the ability to either cut each leave separately or you can cut the entire crown at the level of the soil. There are different ways that you can store the leaves.
You can cut them and put olive oil so as to moisten the leaves. Once you are done with that place them in the container and add olive oil to preserve them. Even though you will cut them the flavor will remain.
This plant is great because it contains riboflavin, iron, carotene, and calcium. All of these will be of great value when you use it. When you preserve it and use it later on all these ingredients will only help you.
Pests
Culantro is a low-maintenance plant. Generally, it doesn’t attract pests and doesn’t get any diseases. The only ones that it might attract are the beneficial insects and the aphids. The beneficial insects are the ones that help in decomposing the plant and eating the pests that cause harm to your plants.
Beneficial insects are the bees, the butterflies, the lady bags and many more. These are beneficial insects because they destroy pests like aphids. Aphids destroy plants including culantro. They sucκ the sap and they spread diseases which is extremely harmful to the plant.
You can use beneficial insects or use pesticides that will destroy them. Unfortunately, if you use pesticides there is a possibility that you might kill the beneficial ones too. A wise option would be to use natural methods, like water when you spray your plant.
Cooking
As we mentioned above it is an amazing herb that you can use in your kitchen and has a distinct flavor. It is used all over the world and in different cuisines from the U.S to Asia and India. It gains more and more popularity every day.
As a cooking herb, you have the ability to find it all over the world. You can use it in soups, sauces, stews, snacks basically wherever you want to. Even in salads, apart from being cooked, you can eat it raw too. It is used in very well-known foods such as sushi.
The leaves of this plant can be found in different supermarkets in the U.S. What is also important is that they are exported all over the world and they plant it as well. You can use your imagination and create different tasteful dishes with it.
From what we saw it is used as a herb in cuisines and in medicine too. It is a low maintenance plant that needs to have plenty of sunlight in order to grow.
It will grow best during the spring and summer months. It needs a warm soil in order to grow and fertilizer too. It is a plant that doesn’t get diseases and pests apart from the aphids. That is why the beneficial insects exist.
In this article, we provided you with tips in order to know how to plan Culantro. Apart from that though, we showed you other ways that you can use this plant. If you decide to plant it in your garden you will have different ways to use it. You will decide which ones you like.
