Harvesting Coriander & Mint

The coriander we had sowed back in December is ready for harvesting. My mom has dedicated one tub for everyday's use and she is pinching a couple of leaves from it everyday for sambar or rasam.

The rest from the three pots went into a coriander thuvaiyal(chutney) on a weekend.. Here is the whole of the leaves that were harvested for the thuvaiyal.

Along with coriander leaves, we also add mint leaves that adds flavor and lifts the taste of the thuvaiyal to a new level. Apart from the mint bed that I had mentioned before,we now have one more pot dedicated to growing mint leaves. 

This pot is the result of our continuous effort to have a backup to our mint bed. We tried so many times to grow mint in a pot and after an early success the leaves and the mint stalk eventually dry out and we could not find the reason behind it. Only lately I put in some mint stalk in a pot that was filled with compost and coco-peat. This pot was originally planned to grow potatoes but they did not come up well(another story that I'll tell about later) and so I decided why not try the mint in this pot.

The four mint stalks that I put in here were terribly sad looking for a few days but we did not let it be and kept encouraging them by pouring lot of water over it. Then suddenly the magic happened and they put on vigorous growth as is the characteristic of mint.

After harvest

The lesson I learnt here is that a loose soil is a must to grow mint. My earlier attempts had a high ratio of red soil which tend to become cakey after a few days. Looks like mint loves coco-peat too.