Parsley
A popular garnish for egg and fish dishes
Parsley is a perennial plant, meaning that if look after your plant, it’ll garnish your dishes for years. It’s hardy too and will survive a frosty winter.
The leaves are rich in vitamin C and iron.
This is a week by week diary of the growing, maintenance and harvesting parsley.
Quick tips
- Sow into a seed tray
- Grows as a compact, curly leafed bush
- Germinates in 2-4 weeks
- Seeds can be sown all year round
Dates
To grow parsley through the summer outdoors, use the following dates:
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sow (indoor) | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I |
| Sow (outdoor) | O | O | O | O | O | |||||||
| Harvest | H | H | H | H | H | H |
Types of
We’re growing “Moss curled 2” parsley this year which can be found in garden centers or here from Mr.Fothergills
Growing diary
I started this diary, and sowed these seeds, towards the end of October (43rd week of the year).
Week 1: Sowing
The first step for our diary is to sow our parsley seeds into a seed tray. Make sure the seed tray has holes in the bottom so that any excess water can drain away.
Start by filling the seed tray with some compost and pressing it down gently to remove any air holes.
Next, open your seed packet and sprinkle a few of your parsley seeds on the surface. We only need a few healthy seedlings, so don’t go crazy.
Then, cover the seeds with a little more compost to cover them and allow the moisture of the compost to surround the seeds:
Lastly, water this thoroughly to give the seeds the best chance of germinating.
Put this on a warm/sunny windowsill so that the seeds are warm enough to germinate. All we need to do now is wait.
Week 2: Germination starts
Checking at the end of week 2, we can see the parsley has started growing already.
They have started relatively early, which is a good sign for the quality of the seeds.
Week 3 → 12: Seedlings growing on
We can see a little more germination and the seedlings starting to grow well.
There is not much we need to do other than making sure the soil does not dry out.
If the seedlings start leaning to on side, as you can see above, rotate the tray every few days to encourage the seedlings to grow straight.
Week 14: Coming next week
I’ll update this page with the parsley’s progress. If you have any questions or tips, please put them in the comments so we can all benefit from your experience.
Article written on Oct 22, 2020
Updated Jan 27, 2021