Yes it is. Cilantro that is grown commercially is seeded every two weeks. I always plant seeds around a new plant because by the time one plant is done another is ready to take it's place. I do this all summer so I have enough for when the tomatoes are in season. Cilantro seed germinates easily. Cover seed lightly. The seed packet might be marked Coriander because Coriander is the seed and Cilantro is the folage. You can pinch the flowers off to try and keep it a little longer.

How much do I pinch off? I don't want the seeds yet, I haven't had a chance yet to use my leaves, :( Can I still make it bushier?

Oh yeah, its bolting!! Pinching off will not help.. Once it starts to send up those thin leaves it soon flowers. Even if you pinch off the thin leaves, no flat ones will grow back again. This is the main reason you would want to start several batches so you can harvest a new batch every few weeks. Unless you have an unusual strain that is slow to bolt, its not going to help much. The herboholic photos look more like parsley leaves. I have not seen cilantro 'come back', unless its from seeds that have sprouted from a previous planting/bolting/ blossoming, then reseeding, germinating, sprouting etc... a single seed head of coriander/cilantro will have at least 50 or more round seeds.

The picture I posted above, I assure you, is cilantro. You'll have to trust me when I say my palette is sophisticated enough to tell the difference between the two. I must tell you, it's just a "little" off-putting to hint at the fact that I possibly don't even know what herb I'm growing. With all due respect, you're not the only gardener on this forum with a knowledge of herbs.

I have kept pinching it back (since it became really full, somewhere probably around April when it started REALLY filling out) and it just grows and grows. Go figure. I do get those thin leaves and little "seed" heads (a signature of cilantro)....but I pinch them off and it just grows bushier and bushier.

Sooner or later, I won't be able to contain it, but it's been amazing that it's lasted as long as it has. I've made many batches of cilantro pesto, and it has a completely different taste that pesto made with parsley.

I think herboholic just got lucky with his variety of cilantro. Yes, those leaves do look more like parsley but there are lots variety within a plant species and he may have hit the jackpot on a cilantro that will resist bolting. I would suggest that he let a plant "bolt" and save the seed to see if it returns true to the slow-bolt form. Also, cilantro and parsley look VERY different when blooming and seeding so the truth will be told then. Parsley looks very much like dill or Queen Anne's lace when blooming with a flat flower and seed head. Cilantro forms a spike flower head that matures into weird little fuzzy green seed pearls.

I have a "hot" cilantro plant...no kidding the leaves are cilantro-jalepeno flavored. It looks like any other cilantro plant but the taste is very peppery and hot. It may look like parsley at certain times of its lifespan, but the scent and taste of the leaves is WILDLY different from parsley. I understand completely what herbaholic means when he says that his palate can readily tell the difference between the two plants. I'll go out in a bit and take pictures of cilantro blooming and parsley blooming. :-)

Flat leaf parsley looks like cilantro, but greener. Asians call Cilantro chinese parsley. Even though you may take an offensive attitude by my remarks, please keep in mind that everyone here has the right to post a comment or observation that they feel is appropriate for the subject at hand. My cilantro patch has never looked like that it your photo, and I have been growing cilantro for about 30 years. I still say that the deep green color isn't as noticable on cilantro, unless your using some kind of special filter or lens on the camera. Everyone can be wrong at one time or another, just don't vocally jump down on something that might be a conflict to your logic.

I do use a UV filter on my camera, and then there are different settings, aperture and shutter speed that both let in more/less light, making a plant look deep green to pale green. There there's morning sun vs afternoon sun, all which affect picture quality (the cilantro appears to be deeper green in the morning sun that the bright afternoon sun, but that could be, as I said, because I have to adjust camera settings for those different times of day). Although my digital camera can be set to an automatic program, I adjust shutter speed and aperture manually for the best picture. So there are those factors.
I wasn't meaning to jump down your throat. I just wanted to mention that is WAS a little off-putting in the observation that I posted a picture of what looked like parsley instead of cilantro, To me, just me, it came off as the notion that "herboholic" was growing parsley and not cilantro....when I clearly know the difference.
Those factors concerning the camera do come into play. Before making such observations again, I would keep that in mind. Pictures can be deceiving.
But there really was no maliciousness intended in my posting. Sure...I was a little irritated, but I think anyone who knows their herbs would be a little put-off when it was hinted at that they didn't even know what type of herb that had been growing for a couple years. That's all. It would be like me confusing my mint with my basil, although they are in the same family. Ain't gonna happen. Besides the taste, I can discern the difference visually.

But it's all good. Happy and successful gardening to you.

Yes its a two way street. With the looks of it, I would expect that you could sell quite a lot. Here, cilantro doesn't like heat or a lot of sun, as it tends to wilt and turn tan/brown quickly.

Some of mine does get that "tan/brown" thing going on too. I just chop off those leaves, as well as a lot of the underlying that are hidden from the sun because it's so dense. They're completely yellow.

I tried growing parsley my first year in a different part of the garden, and had no luck at all, so I resigned myself to just picking up what I needed at the supermarket and keeping it in a glass of water in the 'fridge covered loosely with plastic wrap. Lasts a LONG time that way. Not as good as growing my own, but hey, I tried. It just won't grow for me. As dill. I WISH I could grow dill, but I just seem to have no luck with it. Now YOU....you can grow dill! Lucky!!

Got to get out and pull all the dill up and dry the leaves. If its left anyt longer out there, I will have a zillion seeds again, with it sprouting up everywhere. As a test, pick up some mammouth dill seeds and just simply sprinkle them around in the soil, ver year next spring. You should start to see small thin leaves forming in a few weeks. After it rained, many of my tall dill plants are now leaning. Don't attempt to start dill in pots. Whwn mine goes to see, and they drop into the soil, at least 50% will surviev a Z6 winter and sprout next spring. Even for that, the corn gluten I apply as a weed deterrent, doesn't seem to affect the dill seeds from germinating.

You can get bolt-resistant varieties of coriander. Santo is a named variety that is supposed to be slow-bolting:

http://www.ecoseeds.com/#anchor33
http://www.tough-love.com/seed_descriptions.html#CILANTRO
http://www.richters.com/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=SubIndexPages/Coriander.html&cart_id=8098545.24497

Richter's also carries a variety that is supposedly better suited to container growing. Personally I've never had much problem growing coriander in containers, as long as it gets PLENTY of light - and I do mean PLENTY.

I pull up the entire plant, root and all, and store it in the refrigerator with the roots in water. I use something called a "Parsley Keeper" that I bought from Burpees almost 25 years ago, but these haven't been available for a long time. It has a crockery top, the lower portion is a tall narrow glass jar. You could use any kind of glass beaker with some kind of cover on it (to keep the coriander from picking up refrigerator odors). Fill with just enough water for the roots, keeping the leaves out of the water. Change the water every couple of days. Coriander keeps virtually forever this way (well, long enough that I use it up before it has a chance to start cold composting).

I suspect part of the problem with the early bolting for the original poster might be that the plant wasn't getting enough light. My first attempt at container growing coriander looked like that.

Also, be careful about the assumption that "cilantro" means the leaf and "coriander" means the seed. It isn't true. Cilantro is merely the Spanish name for coriander. While there are an increasing number of recipes that do use the terms this way, there are an awful lot out there that DO NOT. I've been cooking with both the leaf and the seed for many more years than I care to think, and this is a myth of fairly recent origin.

BTW, the root has it's uses, as well. It's fairly commonly used in Thai cooking, and sometimes in Indian cooking when a curry paste is desired that has the flavor and aroma of coriander leaf without getting the green color as well (red curry paste). The root has a similar flavor and aroma to the leaf, but a bit more pungency.

Sojourner

BTW, coriander is commonly grown in India. Although heat will cause it to bolt faster, if your coriander gets wilted and turns brown/yellow, there's something going on other than just the heat. Plants don't wilt unless they're moisture-stressed. Try mulching your coriander plants, and/or grow them around taller plants to reduce some of the heat burden (so they're in semi-shade).

Sojourner