Start Your Herb Garden With Parsley
Friday, August 15th, 2008 | Author: admin
If you’re not an experienced gardener, parsley is a great herb to start your herb garden with.
What’s So Great About Parsley?
1. You Can’t Kill It.
Especially if you actually WANT to. 
2. If you do kill it, it’ll come back somewhere, sometime.
I lost my entire parsley crop in a severe heat wave one time and yet some weeks later, new shoots of parsley appeared in the pot. I was stunned. If you allow some of your plants to go to seed then you’ll get new parsley plants coming up.
3. A little bit goes a long way.
For most dishes, I don’t need huge amounts of parsley. Once cut up, it’s amazing how far a small amount of parsley can go, either as a garnish or to flavour dishes.
4. It’ll grow faster than you can eat it.
Once established, I find parsley will grow quicker than we can consume it. Of course, if you have a larger farmily and use quite a bit of it, a couple of plants is recommended.
5. It’s the kind of herb that goes with EVERYTHING!!!
Okay, I’ve never tried it with ice cream but it goes with most things.
6. Even fussy, “plain” eaters will tolerate at least a little parsley in dishes.
It’s flavour isn’t hugely over-powering. My children can be a bit fussy at times but will tolerate parsley in most dishes.
7. It has a decent amount of iron in it.
(and won’t clog up your back end like those nasty iron tablets do)
8. Parsley is high in antioxidants
Flavonoids in parsley combine with oxygen radicals which helps to prevent oxygen-based damage to cells.
9. Cleanse Your Palate
In addition to it’s many health benefits, parsley has been known to cleanse the palate and reduce strong food odors in the breath.
Coming Up: Tips For Growing Parsley in Your Herb Garden
Sunday, 17. August 2008
Parsley plants go to seed in their second year, so plant some when the first plants are one year old, then you can pick and use it while the first lot goes to seed. Learn to recognise the flower stem which grows up through the middle of the plant (it’s much thicker, so fairly easy to spot),let it flower to bring the bees, then as the flower heads die and brown off cut them and store in a paper bag to finish drying completely. When dry crumble the heads into a large bowl, scatter it in the place where you want to grow more parsley. If you’ve planted 3 successive seasons of parsley, and collected seed from each and replanted, you’ll never run out of parsley again.
Sunday, 17. August 2008
P.S. Don’t let ALL the plants go to seed, you’ll have far too much. For some of them, cut out the flower stem before it gets too big, definitely before it forms the flower head, and cut all the parsley for drying and storing, in case you lose the lot in another heatwave.
Saturday, 23. August 2008
Word to the wise - combine an unsupervised 7 year old, a packet of parsley seeds and a small patch of dirt and you will get a large crop of parsley - but no seeds to contempate another crop!
Saturday, 23. August 2008
River - thanks for adding your experience.
Jeanie - ROFLOL. Oh dear!!!
Saturday, 23. August 2008
Jeanie-let a couple of the plants flower and set seed, you’ll have much more than you need.