How to Grow Cilantro: Direct Sow and Beat the Bolt

How to plant and grow cilantro

Don’t start cilantro indoors: it grows a taproot, a single long root, almost as soon as it sprouts, and transplanted seedlings usually stall or die.

Heat is the other thing that ends a crop. Once daytime temperatures sit above about 80°F, cilantro bolts, meaning it sends up a flower stalk and stops making the leaves you want. Leaves are ready 45–70 days after sowing and keep coming only until that happens, which is why staggered sowings are the only way to keep cutting.

Sow direct, ½ inch deep, 4 weeks before last frost
That frost date is the average date of the final spring freeze where you live, and When to Plant Vegetables shows how to look yours up. Choose fertile, well-drained soil. Cilantro tolerates partial shade and does best with more sun, so give spring sowings the sunniest part of the bed.

Sow 10–15 seeds per foot of row, with rows 15 inches apart; a 4-foot row across a 4×8 bed takes 40 to 60 seeds. Sowing that early is safe because the plants handle light frost and survive brief dips to 28°F. Seed sprouts best in soil between 55 and 68°F and takes about 21 days to come up even then, so a slow start is normal.

Once seedlings are established, thin them to 6 inches apart, or 8–10 inches for plants you mean to let run to coriander seed. The guide to direct sowing vegetable seeds covers bed prep and seeding technique in detail.
Succession-sow every 2–3 weeks
No single planting lasts the whole cool season, so keep a short row coming up behind each one: when one planting bolts, the next is ready to cut. If you log cilantro in Arbor, it tracks your sowing dates and prompts the next succession planting at the 2–3 week mark throughout your cool-season window, so the interval does not slip between garden visits.

Use shade and slow-bolt varieties as the days warm
As the days warm toward summer, shade and variety choice buy a little more time. Shade from taller plants, such as the north side of a tomato cage or trellis once those are up, keeps the strongest midday sun off, and a straw mulch keeps the root zone cooler.

For slow-bolt varieties, Calypso holds out longest and Slow Bolt is the easiest to find; Santo, also slow to bolt, adds dark leaves and good flavor. Leisure matures fastest, in 28–40 days, which suits quick successions.
Harvest outer leaves early and often
Once leaves reach 4–6 in
Leaves are ready 45–70 days from sowing, sooner with quick-maturing varieties. Cut individual outer leaves once they reach 4–6 inches, leaving the center of the plant (the growing point, where new leaves form) intact. Regular picking keeps the plant in leaf production longer and delays the shift to bolting.
Cut the whole plant when you want a lot at once
1–2 inches above the soil
When you want a lot at once, cut the whole plant 1–2 inches above the soil instead. It sometimes regrows, but not once daytime temperatures stay above 80°F. Past that point, sow a fresh round rather than waiting on the stumps.
Let bolted plants finish for coriander
Bolted plants are still worth leaving to finish for coriander, the dried seed of the same plant, used whole or ground as a spice. Seed from a spring sowing takes about 100 days in all. When the flower clusters (umbels) turn from green to tan or brown, cut them into a paper bag and let them dry indoors until the seeds release easily.

When to plant cilantro in your zone

Spring and fall sowing windows differ from zone to zone.

Zones	Notes
3–4	In zones 3–4, the spring window is the primary opportunity. Sow 4 weeks before your last frost date and make successive sowings every 2–3 weeks through early June before summer heat arrives. A fall window is unlikely given early first-frost dates in these zones.
5–7Upper Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific Northwest	In zones 5–7 (Upper Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific Northwest), cilantro is a two-window crop. Sow in early spring 4 weeks before your last frost date; then sow again in late summer at least 60 days before your first fall frost to catch the cooling nights of September and October before the ground freezes.
7–8Upper South, transition zone	Zones 7–8 (Upper South, transition zone) have a shorter spring window before summer heat arrives. Fall planting, starting in late August or early September, typically yields better leaf production than spring because temperatures are falling rather than rising, giving plants a longer cool runway.
9–11Warm winters	In warm-winter zones (9–11), summer is off-limits entirely. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension and UF/IFAS both recommend an October–February planting window for the Gulf Coast and Southwest. Cilantro functions as a fall-through-spring crop here, and in frost-free winters plants may continue producing through January with little attention.

Coastal Pacific gardens from California through Oregon and Washington can grow cilantro through much of the year. The moderate maritime climate reduces heat stress, though spring and fall remain the most consistent windows for leaf production, particularly in gardens a few miles inland from the coast where summer heat arrives sooner.

How cilantro grows

Cilantro is a cool-season annual that grows best between 50 and 85°F, and trouble starts near the top of that range. Sustained heat above about 80°F, together with lengthening spring days, makes the plant shift energy from leaves to flowering. Leaves turn small and feathery, flavor sharpens, and then the harvest window closes. Heat is the trigger, not drought. Moist soil still matters, since dry roots speed bolting at the margins: water about every 5 days in normal weather and more often in hot spells. But no amount of watering holds a plant in leaf once the days stay hot.

The taproot is the other hard constraint. Cilantro forms it almost immediately after germination, and disturbing it, even easing a seedling out of a cell tray, makes the plant stall or die. So cilantro has to be direct-sown where it will grow, and starting seeds indoors for a head start only sets up a transplant failure.

Cilantro bolts for the same underlying reasons as lettuce and other cool-season greens: rising heat combined with lengthening days pushes the plant toward reproduction. The bolting article for lettuce and greens explains that mechanism in more detail.

What pairs with cilantro

Cilantro pairs naturally with lettuce in the garden, since both are cool-season crops that prefer similar timing and benefit from afternoon shade as temperatures rise in spring.

Good neighbors

lettuce

Aphids on cilantro

How do I deal with aphids on cilantro?

Aphids occasionally colonize cilantro stems; a hard spray of water knocks most off. For a full treatment protocol, see aphids on vegetables.

How to Grow Cilantro: Direct Sow and Beat the Bolt

Growing cilantro at a glance

How to plant and grow cilantro

Sow direct, ½ inch deep, 4 weeks before last frost

Succession-sow every 2–3 weeks

Use shade and slow-bolt varieties as the days warm

Harvest outer leaves early and often

Cut the whole plant when you want a lot at once

Let bolted plants finish for coriander