Question
Leroy,

Stumbled across your site while searching for answers to my patio herb garden problems.

A little bit about my set up. I live in South-East Virginia, very hot and humid in the summer and this has been my first patio garden. I have sixteen herbs going in their own terra cotta pots (12" diameter and deep). Everything seems to be growing well, I lightly water all my herbs, tomatos, peppers and flowers daily and they receive ten to twelve hours of sunlight a day.

My questions. My cilantro didn't produce as much leaves as I had wished. It has bloomed with flowers on top and the leaves haven't grown back. So now I have long skinny stems with flowers on top. This morning I harvested the corriander seeds and pruned the flowers and cut about an inch off the top. Was this a good move on my part or did I just say goodbye to that plant for the year? And if it was a good move, well it produce more cilantro leaves?

My dill is in a similiar situation. It didn't produce any leaves and grew flowers. I did the same to it as I did with the cilantro. Was this a good move or bad? Confirm / deny.

My last question is I have six roma tomato's growing on my patio as well. They were planted a little after Easter and they are about four feet tall. The first seven or eight fruit that they produced were brown tipped and kind of moldy. I took them off the vine and future fruit has been fine. Do you know what that was or what might of caused that?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Joshua

Answer
Joshua:
The cilantro & dill love sunny & cool weather. They will go to seed as soon as it  into high 70's, low 80's. The best way is what you did to keep production up. Cut out the flowers and more leaves will produce in a small amount. The best variety of cilantro seeds is called "santo'. You can get it from johnny's seeds. They have a web site and free catalog. Also try their dill 'superdukat. It is also  sow seeds every 3 weeks to have a steady supply. Water every 3 days & none at all if rains that week. Feed organic fertilizer for slow steady growth. Liquid fish fertilizer is good & can be purchased at home depot/lowe's. The high humidity may be causing the problems on tomatoes. Go to gardens alive.com for products to use.