How to Grow Your Own Cilantro

**Balcony Gardening: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Own Cilantro **  

🌿 Spring is the perfect season to grow cilantro! If you want to enjoy homegrown, flavorful cilantro from your balcony by May, take notes—I'm about to share the ultimate guide!  

1. Get Your Seeds Ready  

If you don’t have cilantro seeds yet, buy them online right away. 

**Tip:** Choose a store with high sales volume to ensure fresh seeds. Old seeds have a low germination rate.  

2. Choosing the Right Pot  

A **60cm long, 35cm wide, and 25cm deep** pot is ideal for achieving **cilantro freedom** in spring and autumn.  

3. How to Sow Cilantro Seeds  

•  Level the soil and water it.  
•  For the pot size mentioned above, plant **3 rows with 6 columns**, making **18 planting spots** in total.  
•  Place **3–4 seeds** in each spot.  
•  Cover the seeds with about **0.5cm of fine soil** and spray water gently.  
•  Cover the pot with a **plastic bag** to retain moisture and warmth.  
•  The seeds will germinate in **7–10 days**.  

**Important:** Cilantro seeds are round. Use a bottle to crush them lightly into **half-sphere shapes** before planting.  

4. Best Soil Mix for Cilantro  

Use a **3:1 mix of peat soil and perlite**.  
If you have access to **forest topsoil**, you can use that instead! Just place it in a **black plastic bag** and leave it under the sun for a few days to kill pests and bacteria.  

5. Fertilizing Your Cilantro  

- Before the first **three leaves** appear, you **don’t need fertilizer**.  
- After that, **fertilize every two weeks**.  
- Once the plants mature, fertilize **weekly** for continuous harvest.  

**Fertilizer Options:**  

- If you prefer **store-bought** fertilizer, go for a **compound fertilizer**.  
- For **organic fertilizer**, mix:  
  - **1 part sugar**  
  - **3 parts expired flour, cornmeal, rice, peanuts, beans, etc.**  
  - **10 parts water** in a **5L bottle** (like a used water container).  

**Warning:** Don’t screw the lid too tight—it needs to release gas! Otherwise, the bottle may explode (don’t ask me how I know 😅).  

After **two weeks**, the mix is ready. Use it at a **1:100 ratio** when watering your plants.  

6. How to Harvest Cilantro  

Use scissors to **cut the outer leaves close to the soil**, but leave **three center leaves** so the plant continues growing. Keep fertilizing, and it will keep producing fresh leaves.  

7. Where to Place Your Cilantro Pot  

Cilantro **doesn’t need a lot of sunlight**—just **at least 2 hours of sun per day**, and it will thrive.  

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