The dirt calls late but calls.
Seems I can't escape family traditions
Dad liked to grow stuff, more accurately he liked greenery but was not that good which kinda miffed him. As good Spaniard (and as any old European in general), he wanted grapevines and had them in our back patio as sort of nautral canopy with medium to crappy success.
Mom in the other hand was pure magic when it came to plants. Give that woman a broken broomsick and she would have it blossoming in a couple of months. A farm girl from Spain with not expertise on tropical flora ended up having a wall of Cattleya orchids blooming twice a year and over 100 flowers average.
Me? I was not into the green stuff, mostly because being the only child I was forced to help with the dirty chores in gardening and just the natural way that kids have to go the opposite way the parents do. I did have a good hand with African violets which were my mother’s constant defeat as she could not grow them worth crap.
Now, I love cooking, and it has to be flavorful so that means I need flavorful stuff to be added in the pot. Dehydrated is never quite as good, so here I am in my old fart age actually digging into some sort of gardening.
I got tired of buying herbs at the local Big Hardware Store only to have to buy new ones once they reached their natural life span, so I got Heirloom seeds for basil, parsley and culantro* which seem to be growing nicely. One fine point, if you are going to start from seeds, make sure you tag them properly: the culantro is easy to determine, but I am still having doubts which is parsley and which is basil at this stage.
As I stated above, I like flavor and there is no more flavorful that sweet habanero peppers. Yes, you read right: sweet and non-burning habaneros is what those babies above will produce. I am not into setting my mouth into a furnace because it pretty much screws any other flavors I may have added to a dish in particular. I do have bottles of Tabasco and Cholula available, but as ad-on and only when I feel like having it. There is a spectrum of flavors between bland and spicy which a lot of people were never introduced to and don’t know are possible to get unless is black pepper that has been sitting in a can on the table for the last 2 administrations.
“How about tomatoes?” you ask. Remember mom being defeated by african violets? Tomatoes are my violets; can’t grow the suckers worth a penny.
So, I am a gardener (of sorts) after all.
*Culantro
Culantro (Eryngium foetidum) is an herb that has a similar aroma and flavor to cilantro, but they are not the same plant. It has long, serrated leaves and looks a bit like long-leafed lettuce. Culantro has a stronger flavor than cilantro and is therefore used in smaller amounts. Unlike cilantro, it can be added during cooking rather than afterward. You will find culantro specified in recipes for dishes from the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and Asia.
I found this article that compares Cilantro to Culantro. Mostly, it's a small expansion of what you wrote. Thank you for introducing me to a useful varietal.
https://www.trueleafmarket.com/blogs/articles/culantro-vs-cilantro
I also did not care to "work dirt" despite my rural farm environment upbringing. 3 years ago, I started gardening, mostly because the produce in the stores lacked flavor.
This was the first year my garden did not produce in great abundance; I only raise tomatoes (good crop), cucumbers (fail this year), bell peppers (best yet) and jalapeños.
It all tasted good!