Companion Plant with Your Cilantro

Cilantro is a great herb to grow for the overall health of your garden space, even if you don't love the way its leaves taste.

Companion planting means filling your garden with plants that work together to create a healthy growing space that doesn't rely on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. These plants should like growing in the same season and under the same conditions. Good companions often offer benefits like attracting pollinators, repelling pests, adding nutrients to the soil, or casting much-needed shade on a warm day.

Cilantro, from the Apiaceae family, makes a wonderful companion to many edible plants you might want to grow in your vegetable garden. When cilantro flowers, it attracts pollinators like bees, butterflies, and ladybugs, as well as a number of other beneficial insects. Plus, it has a strong scent that masks the smell of other plants that are super enticing to pests. Many garden pests use smell to find their next snack, so cilantro acts as a kind of olfactory camouflage.

Let's look at the best plants to grow in your garden alongside cilantro to take full advantage of the benefits it can offer.

How Cilantro Grows Best

The biggest thing to consider when planning out your garden is plant preferences. What temperature does it like? How much sunlight does it need to grow? Does it have special nutrient needs? How much space will it take up? Then, you can match that plant with things that have similar preferences. Let's look at what cilantro prefers.

CILANTRO TEMPERATURE PREFERENCE

Cilantro grows best during the cool season (when temps are between 35°F and 65°F) and can handle some frost. It's an annual herb that goes to seed pretty quickly when the temps aren't right. So if you've ever struggled to keep cilantro alive (Who hasn't?), you might have been trying to grow it when it was too warm outside.

You can begin sowing cilantro seeds as soon as your soil is workable in the spring. Take a cilantro growing break in the summer if your temps are in the 80s or 90s. Wait till it starts cooling off to grow cilantro again in the fall. (Download our free Garden Calendar to learn when you can plant cilantro based on your frost dates.)

CILANTRO SUNLIGHT NEEDS

Cilantro only needs about 4 hours of sunlight a day to grow. As you're planning out your raised beds, you don't really need to worry about putting cilantro somewhere it might be shaded by taller plants. In fact, giving cilantro shade as the weather warms up can keep your plant happy and productive a little longer.

CILANTRO WATERING PREFERENCES

Cilantro likes to be watered regularly, definitely more frequently than Lamiaceae herbs like rosemary and thyme. If the soil dries up too much, your cilantro herb can feel stressed out and start to bolt.

CILANTRO NUTRIENT NEEDS

If you're growing cilantro in nutrient-rich soil, you don't really need to add extra fertilizer. I typically add some compost to the planting area and then sprinkle some earthworm castings around the base of the plant after about 30 to 45 days in the garden. You can add an organic fertilizer high in nitrogen if you think your cilantro plants need extra nutrients. Nitrogen is what helps plants produce lots of healthy leaves.

CILANTRO SPACE REQUIREMENTS

Cilantro grows more up and down (it sends down a carrot-like taproot) than side to side. You can pack about 9 cilantro plants into 1 square foot of garden space.

You can even companion plant with cilantro in a container garden. You'll need a pot or container at least 12" deep and wide with a drainage hole in the bottom.

The 20 Best Cilantro Companion Plants

Here's a list of the 20 best plants to grow with your cilantro herbs this cool season.

• Arugula
• Basil
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Calendula
• Carrots
• Chervil
• Dill
• Garlic
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Marigolds
• Nasturtiums
• Onions
• Parsley
• Peas
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Swiss Chard

Now, let's look at how these plants make great cilantro companions.

The Best Herbs to Grow with Cilantro

Aromatic herbs are wonderful to plant in your garden space. Not only can you harvest tons of leaves for your kitchen, but the strong scents actually help to repel pests. For this reason alone, it's a great idea to plant lots of different herbs in each and every one of your garden beds.

Here are some herbs that make great neighbors for cilantro.

Basil

Even though basil's in a different plant family than cilantro, it has similar watering preferences. Basil and cilantro do have different temperature preferences since basil likes to grow in warm weather and can push into the summer months even in a hot climate. Your cilantro and basil will overlap in your garden after your last frost date in the spring and in the weeks leading up to your first frost in the fall.

Chervil

Chervil, or French parsley, is a less-well known annual herb in the Apiaceae family. It looks a lot like its cousins parsley and cilantro, and it has the same growing preferences. Some gardeners claim that growing chervil near cilantro makes the cilantro leaves even tastier.

Dill

Dill is another cool season annual herb from the Apiaceae family. You can plant it out at the same time as your cilantro, and when these two produce flowers near the end of their growing season, you'll attract every beneficial insect around to your garden space. Some gardeners say not to plant dill close to cilantro due to cross pollination if you're interested in saving seeds from your herbs. I've never found that to be an issue.

Parsley

Cilantro and parsley are garden BFFs. They even look so similar you might have trouble telling them apart until you can smell them. Parsley grows best during nice, cool weather, but it can last much longer in your garden than cilantro. That's because it's a biennial plant.

The Best Leafy Greens to Grow with Cilantro Plants

Cilantro grows really well alongside leafy greens like lettuce and kale. Like cilantro, most leafy greens prefer shorter days, cooler temps, and plenty of moisture in the soil.

As soon as the weather warms up, many of your leafy greens will begin to feel stressed out and start attracting garden pests like aphids and caterpillars. Cilantro will get stressed out too and bolt, or form flowers in preparation for seed production. You won't be able to harvest yummy cilantro leaves anymore, but don't worry. Your cilantro plants will still earn their keep in your garden. Those dainty white cilantro flowers will attract all kinds of beneficial insects, including ladybugs and parasitic wasps, to take care of the pests that are attacking your leafy greens.

Lettuce

Lettuce plants really benefit from growing near fragrant herbs like cilantro. Lettuce plants are more sensitive to frost than cilantro, but you can still sow lettuce seeds a couple weeks before your last frost date and continue to grow mature plants after your first frost date.

Spinach & Swiss Chard

Spinach and Swiss chard are both frost-hardy greens from the Amaranthaceae family. They can go in the garden as soon as your soil can be worked in the spring and will be perfectly happy to grow near your cilantro.

Brassicas

I love to grow cilantro near cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, arugula, mizuna, mustard greens, collard greens, cauliflower, and cabbage. Cilantro flowers attract predators like ladybugs and parasitic wasps to help you take care of aphids and caterpillars that are especially attracted to these cruciferous plants.

The Best Alliums to Grow with Cilantro Plants

Cilantro isn't prone to pest problems, but it can sometimes come under attack from aphids. Two of the best plants to repel aphids are onions and garlic thanks to their strong scent. These alliums also grow really well in nice, cool weather.

Onions

The scent of onions can do wonders for your cilantro plant and the things growing around it. Try growing green onions if you don't care about growing a full bulb. Green onions can go into the garden at the same time as your cilantro and will give you lots of leaves you can harvest for your meals.

Garlic

Garlic is typically planted in the fall and harvested in the late spring or summer. I like to plant garlic cloves all around my leafy greens for added pest protection.

The Best Root Crops to Grow with Cilantro

Root crops and cilantro share the same growing season—as well as growing preferences—so it's only natural to grow them together.

Carrots

Carrots and cilantro are in the same family, and that's why their leaves look so similar. Carrots benefit most from cilantro when it flowers. That's when cilantro brings in beneficial insects to take care of carrot pests like carrot rust flies, aphids, and nematodes.

Beets

Beets are frost-tolerant roots that love growing in the same season as cilantro.

Radishes

Radishes are the smallest and fastest of our root crops, so you can really pack these into the garden alongside your cilantro. I love to succession sow radishes and cilantro every couple of weeks so that I have a more continuous harvest from these fast-growing plants.

The Best Fruiting Plants to Grow with Cilantro

Cilantro makes a wonderful companion for many of our fruiting plants, including tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, though their time in the garden will really only overlap as you transition from your cool season to your warm season. Just as your fruiting plants are taking off in the rising temps, cilantro will send up those dainty white flowers to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects to your garden (including the wasp that preys on tomato hornworms—huge bonus!). If you leave your flowering cilantro in your beds, it'll improve the overall health and productivity of your garden space well into the summer months.

Then in the fall, you can use these large fruiting plants to cast some shade over the spots in your garden where you're planting cilantro seeds. That'll keep the soil a little cooler so that you can start growing cilantro as soon as possible.

Peas

The best fruiting plant to plant at the same time as cilantro is peas due to their similar temperature preferences. You can start direct sowing pea seeds as soon as your soil can be worked in the spring. Legumes like peas fix nitrogen in the soil, which will help your cilantro plants produce tons of healthy leaves.

The Best Flowers to Grow with Cilantro

Even though flowering cilantro performs the same function as other flowering plants, I still like to add lots of flowers to my cool season beds for the pops of color. Calendula, chamomile, snapdragons, pansies, and dianthus are frost-tolerant flowers that can be planted with cilantro before you pass your last frost date in the spring. Once the threat of frost has passed, you can grow marigolds and nasturtiums.

Not only do these flowers have a ton of benefits for your garden, they're also all edible.

Calendula

Calendula thrives in cool weather. It also serves as a trap crop, or a sacrificial plant, for aphids that would otherwise attack your leafy greens.

Marigolds

Marigolds are pretty much a universal companion plant. That's largely due to the fact that they repel pests like aphids, nematodes, and whiteflies while attracting tons of beneficial insects.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums can also lure aphids away from your cilantro plants. I love tossing nasturtium leaves into my salads for a peppery kick.

What Would a Raised Bed Filled with Cilantro & Good Companion Plants Look Like?

Here's a simple planting plan for a 4' x 4' raised bed. I put cilantro and onions in the corners of the raised bed to repel pests and protect all the leafy greens. The spring mix lettuce is intensively planted, which is ideal for giving you tons of leaf harvests each and every week.

Then there's a row of dinosaur kale in the middle of the bed. The kale will take longer to produce than the lettuce but will then give you tons of leaves. These kale plants will push into the warm season, long after your cilantro and lettuce plants have bolted.

I added some dianthus flowers around the border of the raised-bed vegetable garden for beauty and organic pest control.

This planting plan may not have any shiny fruits in it, but it will be super productive and beautiful during the cool season.

Can You Grow Cilantro with Herbs Like Rosemary & Thyme?

Some gardeners avoid planting cilantro with perennial herbs from the Lamiaceae family like rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, and lavender. They reason that the perennial herbs have totally different watering preferences than annual herbs like cilantro.

I actually love to grow all my herbs together in one large container or raised bed, and there's a simple way to get around their different water needs. You just plant all your perennial herbs around the edge of the container, where the soil will dry out faster. Then, you plant all your annual herbs like basil, cilantro, and dill in the middle of the container, where the soil will hold more moisture.

And no, they don't have completely different soil requirements. All of these herbs thrive in a sandy loam soil (think compost and coarse sand mixed in with topsoil).

Trust me—I've grown my herbs together like this for years, and they're always perfectly happy.

Fill Your Garden with Leaves, Roots, & Fruit!

I hope this helps you plan out your vegetable garden to take full advantage of your next cool growing season. Grow your favorite herbs, leafy greens, root crops, and fruiting plants near your cilantro, and you'll have a thriving garden that naturally deters pest pressure and takes advantage of every single square inch of space.

Thanks for being here and helping to make gardening ordinary!