That clean, green, mineral-like flavour of flat-leaf parsley in winter, particularly in salads, is one of the ways I hold dear to getting through the darker months. It’s rich in iron, vitamin A and C, several B complexes, packed with flavonoids and has a long history of aiding digestion.
For such a health-giving herb, parsley has long been marred by strange superstitions and devilish ways. Apparently, one of the reasons it is notoriously slow to germinate (and it can take over a month) is because the seed has to visit the devil several times first, often forgetting to come back from the underworld. In reality, this is just the vagaries of being in the Apiaceae family: it is notorious for having seed with underdeveloped embryos, which results in patchy germination.
Now the days are slowly lengthening, my parsley is thinking ahead – come late spring it will want to flower. Parsley flowers are beautiful: lime green and much loved by hoverflies and bees.
If you have parsley that you’ve over-wintered, now is the time to move it, to a spot where it can flower without taking up valuable growing space. If you get a good amount of seed, save some for tea: it’s good for indigestion and flatulence, but not advisable if you are pregnant.
You can sow the seed indoors now, or outdoors in mid-spring. Outdoors, I’d pre-warm the soil with a cloche. Parsley has a huge germination range, from 5C-32C. However, germination often fails if the night-time temperature drops too low. The ideal temperature is 27C during the day and 20C at night. If you sow indoors now, you can plant out in April.
Take care to keep the soil moist, but not sodden, until the seedlings peek out. Parsley likes to grow long and plentiful roots. If you want healthy plants from which you can pick all summer, you must give them space to roam. Thin the plants out to 30cm apart in either direction; if you are growing in a pot, put a single plant to a 10-litre pot. There’s an old trick where you water the drill (where the seeds are to be sown outside) with a kettleful of boiling water before sowing (not after, as that might kill the seeds). The heat doesn’t stick around, so it’s likely that the boiling water sterilises the soil to keep disease and perhaps other weed seeds away over the long germination period. A second sowing in July and you’ll have parsley all year round.
Flat-leaf parsley is superior tasting – try Giant Italian or Plain Leaved 2; but I have a fondness for the curly stuff, Champion Moss Curled or Lisette, particularly as a frill to the edge of beds and borders.
