how to sow parsley seeds
Watch as Sarah demonstrates how to sow one of her favourite herbs, parsley, and shares top tips for successful germination.
Parsley is one of my absolute favourite herbs, I love it because it’s got that really sort of bright flavour, but also I love it because it’s so hardy, so you can sow it almost anytime in the year. We tend to sow it in March and sort of October time, September, October. March we pick right the way through the summer, and then the autumn sowing we pick right the way through the winter, and even if it’s under snow, it doesn’t bat an eyelid, which is incredible.
Now, it is not difficult to sow at all, but it has one eccentricity, which is that it has a germinator inhibitor in its seed coat, funnily enough parsnips and I think beetroot do as well, and so what I tend to do is soak it overnight, and that just soaks away the germinator inhibitor, but it makes it a bit more of a fiddle because then you need to drain the seed, so swish it well and then dry it on paper, tea strainer is fine, and then spread it out like that, and you could then leave that a few hours so it’s properly dry but I want to get on with it.
I’m going to use these brilliant new seed trays and we’ve been experimenting with them a lot recently because they’re made from rubber, and what that means, is that they’re not made from plastic basically, so no single-use plastic or no short life plastic, these just go on and on and on, you can reuse them over years and years and years and it’s all Fairtrade and sustainable rubber plantations, so they’re really, it’s you know it’s a really good thing to add to your potting shed bench because of that reason. So I’m just filling it – we use wool compost – a really lovely compost for seeds. And then I’m going to do two seeds to each cell, and I always sow right on the top of the compost so I know exactly where I’ve been before I press them in. Cover up, label. And literally water, and that’s it. My Parsley is sown.
