How to grow parsley

Parsley is a biennial herb in the carrot family that home gardeners grow almost universally as an annual. Native to the Mediterranean region, it forms a low, dense rosette of dark green, finely divided leaves that can reach 12 to 18 inches tall in its first growing season. The plant fits comfortably in a kitchen bed, a container, or along a border edge; it is one of the few culinary herbs that extends its productive season well into autumn, continuing to yield harvestable foliage after early cold snaps. It also serves as a host plant for black swallowtail butterfly larvae, which rarely cause enough defoliation to matter in a home garden.

The hardest part of growing parsley well is understanding its biennial life cycle before it becomes a practical problem. A second-year gardener who overwinters first-year plants in a mild enough climate, expecting a repeat of the previous season's production, will find those plants bolt early in spring, pushing up a flower stalk and abandoning leaf production. The University of Minnesota Extension notes that second-year parsley is more bitter than first-season growth, and once the seed stalk appears, the harvestable window closes permanently. Starting fresh seed each season is the only reliable way to maintain the leaf quality the plant is actually grown for.