Foodies and gardeners alike often find coriander to be among the most polarising plants in the patch, eliciting equally passionate responses of both love and hatred. While there is nothing that we can offer to change your taste, gardening haters may need to accept some responsibility. Rather than pointing the finger, it may be time to address our own shortcomings.

Coriander can sometimes feel like a tumultuous relationship that you keep going back to. But have you ever considered that maybe coriander is not the difficult partner we make it out to be, rather it always seems to be dating absolute duds? That’s right, we need to stop trying to change coriander, and rather try to understand it better.

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It's often hard to come to grips with what to plant at what time of the year, so we're breaking down the months and the plants that are available to grow. Here we have our what to plant lists for Australia's four distinct climatic zones, with an indication of what form to plant at this stage of the season;

- s for seed
- se for seedling

Please note: these are recommendations only and the micro climate that you live in may mean that there are different possibilities. So use this as a guide, but always use your intuition and experiment!

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September is without doubt the busiest time for the veggie patch. Preparing, pondering and planting, there is so much to do in the garden right now. Here are our lists of What to Plant during this month, broken down into our four distinct climatic zones.

We have separated the varieties according to whether they should be planting from seed (s) or seedling (se) directly in the patch, propagated in a seed tray/minigreenhouse to be transplanted into the garden at a later date (p) or grown from a rhizome (r). 

See the climatic zones and find more varieties on our Planting Calendar

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Herbs are hands down the most utilised and important plants of the garden. To leave them out of the patch is like leaving your 8-year-old son, Kevin, home alone while you go on holiday to France. Sure, the consequences are outrageous and hilarious, but who forgets their son and catches a plane to Paris? Probably the same kind of people who don’t plant herbs in the veggie patch.

Nothing breaks our heart more than having to buy herbs from the supermarket. They are easy to grow and most will produce year-round, so if you have the right sort of foresight there should be a little of everything in your patch at all times (the exception being basil). They will also provide a range of scents and colours when in flower to attract beneficial insects into the patch. If you build a mini ecosystem of plants and good insects, the veggie patch will always operate with greater ease and efficiency.

Rather than head to the supermarket with heads bowed – shaming ourselves into buying fresh herbs for the meal that wouldn’t be the same without them – our first course of action is always to scout the neighbourhood. We know there are entire nature strips full of rosemary less than a block away from my house. Parsley protrudes from our next-door neighbour’s fence, as does sage. Of
course you should always ask your neighbour first, but as you do remind them that growth of the plant is stimulated by a small haircut. What you take will quickly regenerate on the plant, so everyone is a winner.

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