Growing cilantro indoors is super easy and a great way to harvest and eat fresh cilantro all year. For gardeners who don’t have outdoor space, an indoor herb garden is a fun and flavorful chance to exercise your green thumb. And for those of us in cold climates, bringing an extension of the garden inside for the winter can add cheer to a space. There are several ways to go about growing cilantro indoors: in a windowsill, under grow lights, as microgreens and as sprouts. I’ll cover all four of these methods in this article, along with general harvest and growing tips for this versatile herb.

Can I grow cilantro indoors?

The cilantro that I’m talking about is Coriandrum sativum, which is an annual plant and a very popular culinary herb. Vietnamese cilantro (Polygonum odoratum) is a different plant and is a perennial. The name may be similar, but it has a distinct taste and growth habit.

Cilantro is a great herb to grow indoors. It’s fast growing, doesn’t need pollination for harvest, and is attractive. Just one plant will continue producing for months if you treat it right, and all parts of the plant are edible. Cilantro plants are small enough that you can grow several together in a reasonable-sized pot. Your indoor-cilantro options also include microgreens and sprouts, which are even faster to grow than full-sized plants.

The best location for growing cilantro indoors

The best thing about growing cilantro indoors is that, given the right setup, you can do so anywhere, from mountain homesteads in Maine to apartments in Alabama. If you don’t have the right sunny windowsill or the space to plug in a grow light, your indoor cilantro can even take the shape of microgreens or sprouts. To grow cilantro as a full-sized plant, it needs at least six hours of direct sunlight, which requires either the right window or a grow light. (I’ll cover each in a minute.) Because you have control over your indoor environment, you can delay the bolting that inevitably occurs the moment the weather turns hot outdoors. 

When it does come time for your cilantro to bolt, the resulting flowers are delicious in salads and make a great garnish. If you’re patient enough to wait for full seed formation and drying, you can keep the coriander seeds for replanting or cooking.

To learn more about growing cilantro indoors, watch this video:

Methods for growing cilantro indoors

As there are many ways to use cilantro in your cooking, there are also many ways to grow it. Of course you can grow cilantro in your garden during cool weather. Indoors, your cilantro can be a year-round part of an indoor herb garden or a stand-alone plant—either in the windowsill or under grow lights. You can also grow cilantro as microgreens or sprouts, which are great space-saving fresh-food options. Here are four options for growing cilantro indoors:

Method 1: Growing a cilantro plant on windowsill

Providing enough light to herbs growing indoors is probably the biggest challenge you’ll have. Growing cilantro indoors on a windowsill will work best if you live in an area that regularly sees sunshine. South-facing windows with full sun are great. East- and west-facing windows may also work. If you’re trying to grow cilantro in a west-facing window with direct sun in a hot climate, you might need to give it some shade from the afternoon sun. 

Be sure the placement of your potted cilantro isn’t in the direct line of your heating vent, as too much heat can make the cilantro plant more likely to bolt. Cilantro thrives with a soil temperature below 75 degrees F (24 degrees Celcius).

Method 2: Using grow lights to grow cilantro inside

Grow lights are an excellent solution to the challenges of providing light to plants indoors, either as a light supplement or to provide all of your cilantro’s light needs. Don’t write off grow lights as industrial-looking pieces of equipment. Besides the grow light setups that use 4-foot LED shop lights, you can also find high-output lights in attractive grow-light fixtures that you’d be happy to display in your living room, plus options in between.

Place the grow lights 6 to 12 inches from the cilantro leaves. As your cilantro grows, remember to adjust the lights. Using grow lights is especially easy when you put them on a timer. Set it for 12 to 16 hours, and forget it.

Method 3: Growing cilantro sprouts 

Sprouts are the immature new growth from a germinated seed. At just 1- to 2-inches tall, your cilantro sprouts are ready to harvest and eat, and this process takes only a few days. Growing cilantro sprouts requires a jar, a sprouting lid (or cheesecloth), and a dark location. No sunny windowsill necessary! 

The basics steps of sprouting are:

1. Start with certified-pathogen-free cilantro sprouting seeds and a sterilized jar. That your seeds are meant for sprouting is more important than whether their variety, such as Santo or Calypso.
2. Soak the seeds in two inches of water for about half a day.
3. Drain and rinse the seeds, and repeat a rinse-and-drain cycle a few times a day. The seeds will germinate with adequate moisture, but letting them sit in too much water can cause them to rot.
4. In a few days, your cilantro sprouts will be ready to harvest and eat.

You can also use a seed-sprouting kit and follow the instructions provided with it. Read about the sprouting process with complete instructions here.

Method 4: Growing cilantro microgreens 

Microgreens are the stage of plant between sprouts and baby greens. Cilantro microgreens, which are just cilantro seedlings, offer classic cilantro flavor in a tiny package. These microgreens have some incredible nutritional benefits, including have 260 times the beta carotene as their full-grown cilantro counterparts. 

If you’re accustomed to growing full-grown plants, you’re familiar with the standard maxims of giving the plant plenty of space, being sure the container drains well, and using a growing medium high in organic matter. Forget that good advice for just a moment while you read about growing microgreens.

Microgreens are grown in densely packed trays in some sort of growing media, such as sterile potting soil or a microgreens mat. The microgreens won’t be alive long enough to draw nutrients from the growing media. Unlike most containers for growing plants, microgreens trays don’t have drainage holes. You can purchase microgreens trays (and whole kits for growing microgreens), but a takeout food container or deep kitchen dish will work just as well.

Basic steps for growing microgreens include:

1. Fill your container with growing media, or line it with a microgreens mat. Wet it well.
2. Some microgreens growers say you need to soak cilantro seeds before sowing them, while others say it’s not necessary. If you choose to soak them, let the seeds sit in water for a few hours.
3. Spread the seeds thickly over the growing medium or mat.
4. Place the tray in a sunny windowsill or under grow lights, like a microgreen specific grow light fixture.
5. Water every few days, and watch your tiny cilantro forest grow.
6. Get ready to start harvesting the microgreens in two to three weeks.

How to have a continuous harvest

The ability to continuously harvest cilantro depends on continuous planting, known as succession seeding. Each method of growing cilantro indoors has its own succession seeding pattern. The succession seeding times I suggest here work for me but will vary for you, depending on how much you love cilantro and how much of it you intend to eat:

• If you are growing cilantro as a plant, either on a windowsill or under grow lights, reseed once a month.
• If you are growing cilantro sprouts, sprout new seeds every few days.
• If you are growing cilantro microgreens, you’ll want to start a new tray every week.

Read more about how to harvest cilantro in this article.

Harvesting indoor cilantro

The best part about growing cilantro indoors is that you can harvest and enjoy it year-round. You don’t even have to put on your shoes to cut herbs for your cuisine! Here’s how to harvest cilantro, depending on the method you used to grow it:

• Begin harvesting from mature plants when leaves are 4 to 6 inches tall. Take only the leaves around the outside of the plant. Let the inner leaves continue growing. You can snap off the stems from the base of the plant by hand, or use scissors to cut each one. Take no more than one-third of the plant at a time.
• Harvest cilantro sprouts when they are 1 to 2 inches long. As you rinse and drain your sprouts over the course of a few days, you’ll be able to keep watch over how they’re doing and will know to harvest them at the right stage. The “harvest” in this case simply means removing them from the jar and rinsing away the remaining seed coats.
• Microgreens are ready to cut when they’re bright green and a few inches tall. These tiny plants are fragile. Use sharp scissors to cut them, careful not to dig into the growing medium. Cut only what you need at that time and leave the rest to continue growing for a day or two.

 

More tips for growing cilantro indoors

Growing cilantro indoors is similar to growing it outdoors. It’s the same plant, but you’re in charge of its growing conditions. Here are a few cilantro-growing tips:

• A mature cilantro plant has a long root system. Plant it in a deep container to prevent it from becoming root bound. 
• Select a well-draining soil and container. Clay and terracotta containers dry out more regularly because they’re porous.
• Water cilantro plants after the soil has dried.
• While you can plant more than one cilantro plant in each pot, don’t mix different herbs in the same pot. Each will have its own ideal growing conditions, and inadvertently, one of them will be unhappy.
• Periodically top dressing the container with an all-purpose fertilizer will keep nutrients flowing to the cilantro plant throughout its time indoors. Sprouts and microgreens should never be fertilized.

Final thoughts on cultivating cilantro indoors

You can choose to grow cilantro indoors using just one or all four of the methods I suggest here. Mix up your annual herb routine with cilantro sprouts or microgreens, in addition to keeping a potted cilantro in the window or under a grow light. 

Take what you already know about growing cilantro, and put it to use inside this winter. By growing cilantro indoors, you don’t have to wait until your last frost has passed in the spring or the cooler temperatures have arrived in the fall to grow your own. This is a rewarding way to have fresh, homegrown herbs in your kitchen year-round, not to mention a quick way for you to become the envy of your foliage-loving friends on social media. 

For more information on growing herbs inside your home, be sure to check out these articles:

• How to grow mint indoors
• Try growing herbs in water – not soil!
• Growing herbs in your kitchen window