Armed with a few pieces of handy information, growing your own parsley in your herb garden can be a simple and rewarding gardening experience.

Parsley Is Biennial

What does this mean?  Simply that the life cycle of a parsley plant takes 2 years to complete.  It’s advisable to have a continuous planting of parsley in various ages in order to ensure a plentiful and continuous supply.

When you’re originally establishing your parsley plants, it is recommended that you plant a couple of times.  Your first plants will provide foliage in the first year and then flower and set seed in the second year.

Once you have plants in various stages established, allowing them to set seed will hopefully allow your parsley plants (and therefore parsley supply) to maintain themselves.

Seed or Seedling?

Both come with their own challenges.

Parsley plant roots can be a little sensitive to transplant so extra care needs to be taken if planting out seedlings.

Parsley seeds have a very hard outer casing and so if growing from seed (my preferred method from a cost point of view), you can soak the seeds first to encourage germination.

Grow in a sunny position where it can receive 6-8 hours of light per day.

If growing in a pot, ensure you have a depth of around 8 inches (20cm) to allow for the long root of the parsley plant.

Types of Parsley

1.  Curled Leaf Parsley

Like that in the picture above, curled leaf parsley is often considered the most popular form of parsley.  It is commonly used as a garnish.

2.  Flat Leaf Parsley

Flat Leaf Parsley tends to have a stronger flavour than curly leaf and is therefore popular to flavour dishes.  This is sometimes referred to as Italian Parsley.

3.  Hamburg Parsley

Grown for it’s long tap root which is used to flavour soups and stews.

Harvesting Your Parsley

Take cuttings from the outside of the plant.

Cutting your parsley will encourage more growth, particularly if stalks are trimmed as well as the leafy growth at the top of the plant.

Storing Parsley

As with all plants, parsley is best used fresh from the plant to the dish you are preparing.  In many climates you can have parsley plants growing year round.

However, if you have more parsley than you can use or don’t have success with growing parsley year round, you can harvest and store it for future use.

1.  Drying

A common way to store herbs is to dry them.  Without moisture, the plant will not spoil and keep for quite a long time.

To dry, harvest with a longish stalk and hang in a protected place.

Alternatively, chop your parsley and dry in a dehydrator or slow oven.

2.  Freezing

Parsley will freeze well.  Chop before freezing then flash freeze spread out on a tray.  The frozen parsley can then be bagged up and used upon as needed.

Alternatively, freeze the entire stalk and use as needed direct from freezer.

Coming Soon: Benefits and Uses for Parsley

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