Bolting Plants
What Bolting Is and How to Avoid It
It is a nice, sunny day and you are on your way outside to harvest your herbs. You are dreaming about the delicious dishes that you can make from the plant. Suddenly you notice that the herb is tough, woody and so bitter that you can’t even eat it. What is going on? The answer is simple: your plant has bolted.
Bolting may sound strange (Giving images of plants running away as the gardener chases them) but it happens a lot in hot parts of the world. It is an inbuilt survival mechanism and once it has start, it is difficult to stop. The herbs cilantro and basil are especially vulnerable to bolting.
What Is Bolting?
Bolting happens when the plant believes that it is too hot to realistically survive. Obviously gardeners that grow their plants in hot, dry regions are more likely to experience bolting than other gardeners. Instead of focusing on growing the delicious leaves that we cook with, the herb abandons all growth and instead focuses on producing seeds to try to ensure the next generation’s survival. This usually leaves the plant inedible.
The early stages of bolting can be seen if the plant is producing an excessive amount of flowers or flowering when you wouldn’t expect it.
What to do If My Herb Starts Bolting
Once bolting has started there are some things that can be done to try and stop it. If you are growing cilantro, your best bet is to hastily snip off the flowers and flower buds. This will slow the process and hopefully give you enough time to harvest the herb. In the case of basil, if you can snip the buds off quickly enough the plant resumes normal growth and your harvest can be saved!
Of course the best prevention is to ensure that the plant doesn’t bolt in the first place. This can be done in a number of ways. If it is not too hot in your country, then using mulch or watering more frequently can be enough to cool the plant down and prevent bolting. If this doesn’t work then you will want to strategically place cover so that the herb is not shaded early on, but is shaded when the Sun is strongest. Herbs that provide cover, such as rosemary, are useful and shades can be easily bought/ manufactured.
