Parsley

Regular readers will know that I always struggle to grow enough Parsley for our culinary needs. It doesn’t do very well in my garden, often suffering from the depredations of ants and the Carrot Root Fly. Anyway, this Winter I am going to attempt to reproduce a success I had last year: I grew some Autumn-sown Parsley under cloches, where it survived the Winter and went on to produce a good crop of lovely fresh leaves in the Spring.

Most of the plants I am using came from this pot:

There were probably about 25 or 30 plants in that pot, so what I did was transplant them in little clumps of about 5 or so, in two parallel rows, aiming to keep their roots as undisturbed as possible (which is far from easy, I must add).

After watering them in very well I covered them with a couple of my long cloches.

Later on I may decide to cover each clump with its own bell-cloche, but at present the long cloches are best, because I can lift them off quickly and easily if I need to water the plants. When Winter really sets in they will probably not require any further watering.

Obviously, these seedlings are currently far too small to be worth cutting, and they will probably grow very slowly, but if the plan pays off they will be at their best in about March next year.

For the time being, our supply of fresh Parsley comes from a batch of bigger plants still residing in pots:

Just for the record, I also want to show you today my little patch of Flat-leaf Parsley plants, grown from the Rocket Gardens prize that Jane won for me. I didn’t think they would survive, because they were incredibly densely sown and were very thin and straggly when I got them. however, they did eventually establish themselves, and are now at a useable size.

I expect lots of you are thinking “What’s all the fuss about? Parsley is easy to grow”, so if you are of that opinion, please tell me what you think is the secret of success.