Growing Parsley

Parsley is one of the most useful herbs there is and one of the best ways to get green stuff into my husband. I used to buy plants or try to grow it from seed, which sometimes worked, and then the flowers would come up the next year and I would keep cutting them off so I would keep getting leaves for a while, but eventually, I forgot to cut them off. The next year I had hundreds of little parsley plants which I decided to let go to seed as well.
Now around the edge of my lily bed I have a row of parsley. So, during the late spring, fall and summer I have unlimited parsely for me and for my friends. I do the same with Oriental garlic chives, chervil and red Japanese mustard. During lily season, the bed is very lovely. The rest of the year, it looks a little ratty with all those seed stems but it provides us with wonderful salads and garnishes. Here is the bed in lily season. ( Asiatic Lilies)

Better lily picture.

Current lily/herb bed July 25,2006. It looks ratty but we are getting lots of parsley and oriental garlic chives and its flowers -- the white flowers in the picture. Tiger lilies are just starting to bloom and the oriental lilies are covered with buds so in a couple weeks it will look completely different.

This message was edited Jul 25, 2006 7:56 PM

I don't think it looks ratty. Not as dazzling as when things will be all in bloom, but it looks sweet and cottagey as is. Nice companions -- I may adorn my lily area with parsley and chives, too. (Okay, my future lily area; haven't been there long enough yet.) Thanks for sharing!

Thanks, Brigidlily.

I assure you I often turn to this bed for goodies for dinner. That makes me quite forgiving of the seed stems. Try chervil too. It is just like parsley but has a faint anise flavor in salads and more delicate looking, too. Actually it is a very attractive plant. It only grows in cool weather, but if you plant it and let it go to seed a couple times, you will have it for life. Here it is on spring and fall. Where you live, it might be a winter crop.

I wonder if I can just grow it in a pot on the patio. Parsley has a very hard time in the summer sun here. So do I. (Having a hot flash when you LIVE in a hot flash can be murder.)

brigidlily,
I don't even want to think about a hot flash in a hot flash! Yipes! As for the parsley. I have grown it sucessfully in a flower pot, but I am not sure it reseeds quite as well. The other thing you might be able to do is plant it where it will get partial shade. That might help. Actually my lily bed is in partial shade. Lilies like a little shade in New Mexico and the parsley doesn't seem to mind at all. My mother once had a reseeding parsley boarder around her patio in New Orleans. It was partially shaded.

New Orleans is even gooier than it is here. This is good to keep in mind for the fall planting coming up.

Yep, I figure if they can grow it in New Orleans, you can grow it in Texas.

Just thought of something. Who uses more parsley than any one else? The Middle East. Remember taboulleh which, properly made, is a parsley salad. It is popular in Turkey, Israel and Lebanon that I am most aware of, but probably lots of other places as well.
I was recently in Turkey and met a woman whose family owned a huge farm in Eastern Turkey near Syria. When I asked her what they raised, she said, everything, but the biggest crop was parsley. I also remember being served plates of parsley with my kababs in Turkey.
Turkey, Israel, and Lebanon are very hot except in the mountains. What that tells me is that parsley grows very well in hot weather. Brigidlily, you may live in parsley paradise. Try again. ( It is a good idea to freeze the seed and soak it in water if you are planting from packaged seed. It will take care of itself after that. )

Thanks for the tip! Will do.

I have pretty good luck with parsley in pots. I usually put them in part sun to part shade. I actually do all my herbs in containers. One of these days I'll have to actually put some in the ground. :)

Mine does well under cukes and beans in the hottest part of summer; in fall it rebounds.

We pour boiling water on the seeds after sowing them; old trick. Quicker germination.

Zeppy,
Both ideas are great! Under cukes and beans in the heat of the summer and boiling water to germinate. I had heard of soaking parsley and freezing it for up to 2 weeks to germinate it, but am amazed to hear boiling water does the same. I guess anything to soften that shell on the seed.