How To Grow Parsley In Texas

In this article, I’m going to be discussing how to grow parsley in Texas. Let’s get started.

Overview

There are two types of Parsley which are curly-leaf parsley and Italian flat-leaf Parsley. The curly leaf parsley is used a lot as a garnish and the Italian flat-leaf parsley is a very robust flavor of about 3 feet by 2 feet and it provides all of the parsley you need for daily cooking and tabbouleh salads.

How To Grow Parsley In Texas

Now, in Texas, you can plant parsley in January and February for a spring crop or you can plant in September for a winter and spring crop.

However, if you plant most of your Parsley in September, this allows you to have parsley all winter and spring.

Parsley is a very cold hardy plant but if temperatures are expected to be 20 degrees or below, then cover the parsley patch for the night with a blanket and uncover it once the temperature is above 20 degrees and all ice and snow have melted.

When you get ready to plant your parsley seeds, you want to plant the seeds 1/4 inch deep in a place that receives full sun or partial shade and in loosened soil that contains compost.

Now pre-soak your parsley seeds overnight in a glass jar with some water in it to help speed up the germination rate or the rate at which the seeds will sprout.

This is because parsley seeds can take between 21 and 36 days to germinate so this helps speed up the process of germination.

After soaking it overnight, plant them the very next morning. You can choose to plant in rows and just sprinkle the seeds and sprinkle a lot of seeds in.

Otherwise, you can choose to plant with what I call plant moats. It’s a sports cup that has the center cut out of it and the center part is what is called the plant moat.

You can use these to put around young seedlings and it helps to keep crawling insects from eating the plant.

It’s very helpful for protection. Since you’ve planted the row and about your plant using the little plant motes and you’ve dug a little hole there and then put your seeds in, use some better soil in there around the seeds. This will help to keep the soil firm a little bit and then now put the second plant moat in.

A good thing about plant modes is it allows you to space out your six inches apart. It’s good for a home gardener who doesn’t do have a huge patch.

Note that when you’re planting parsley, don’t ever plan it with another member of the carrot family and water it well after you have planted it.

Moreover, remember that Parsley can be planted in pots outside or it can be planted indoors and put on a sunny window seal.

Harvesting parsley

When your parsley is about six inches tall, you can start to harvest the Parsley leaves. You want to just use the outside leaves because you don’t want to harvest the whole plant.

So leave the plant there and keep harvesting the outside leaves and this allows you not to have any downtime in between your harvest or between the parsley that you’re using.

One thing you have to be on the lookout for in Texas as the days get warmer and warmer, the plant will begin to send out the centrioles stalks that are a little higher than the rest of the plant.

This is an indication that the plant is going to start trying to bolt or to make flowers that turn into seeds too.

To ensure that the plant keeps making more leaves, cut off that central top so the plant will not invest so much time in making seeds and fewer leaves.

Now, as the weather gets warmer, it’s only a matter of time before you can’t do this anymore and then you’ll just finally have to harvest the crop.

Storage of Parsley

Furthermore, when you harvest the parsley, it’s best to freeze it. Freezing maintains its wonderful flavor better than any other method especially drying.

Drying is not very good for parsley so what you can do is to wash your parsley very well let it dry almost to the point where it’s totally dry, but it still has a little moisture in it.

Thereafter, put it in freezer bags and push out some of the air and then let it dry flat in the freezer. This allows it to keep from sticking together so much and then once it’s frozen, you can pick it up and move it around any way you want.

This is very helpful and it provides fresh parsley throughout the year. Anytime you need it, you can just simply open your freezer door and get some.

Another method some people like to use to freeze their parsley is to simply cook the parsley in ice trays, add water and then freeze it.

Once the cubes are frozen, you pop the cubes out and put the cubes in a freezer bag. Some people prefer the freezer bag method because it takes up less space and you don’t have the water to contend with the ice cubes but it’s pretty nice.

So if you’re making soup or something like that that already has a little water in it, you can just drop the ice cube in the soup that has the parsley in it.

Now, something else you can do once you harvest your parsley is to leave the rest of the crop for the black swallowtail butterflies.

Every year, the black swallowtail butterflies love parsley. It is one of their favorite host plants. A host plant is a plant that the butterflies will lay their eggs on.