How to grow parsley from seeds may at first sight appear intimidating or something only for expert herb growers. Fear not, this is one of the most uncomplicated things to grow. It is a plainly effortless endeavour with a highly rewarding ending. Anyone can grow parsley from home indoors or outdoors.
Although you could try and regrow parsley from stalks and other such methods, if you have access to the seeds I highly recommend just growing your parsley from seeds. This, in my view, is much easier to do than other approaches which are easier said than done.
Also learn how to grow other vegetables from scraps such as Chinese cabbage, potatoes, regular onions and green onions a.k.a. spring onions.
Parsley is also sometimes known as garden parsley. Its botanical name is Petroselinum crispum. Parsley comes in varieties some which tend to be popular based on your location. Historically, parsley is native to the central and eastern Mediterranean region but has since become a global phenomenon, grown just about anywhere in the world. This is a good thing, the amazing flavours and benefits of parsley have come to all kitchen of the world!
insert collage of curly parsley, moss curled, italian
The most common variety of parsley is curly parsley. Other popular varieties are moss curled and italian which itself is easily identifiable by its flat leaves. Variety constraints when you buy already grown parsley from the grocery store or farmers market is one more reason why it all makes sense to grow your own parsley with much freedom on variety.
What time of the year should you grow parsley from seeds?
This is a good question and often asked. What time of the year to grow your parsley is really a matter of where in the world you want to grow it. The greatest opposing factor for parsley is cold season/climate. Frost will derail your parsley growing project. If you eliminate the cold you can pretty much grow your parsley all year round. This is not difficult to do as you shall see. What this means is that in warmer climates, parsley growing is not seasonal. If you are in a cooler climate it is recommended to start on it around late winter.
Overall, all these conditions apply when you intend to grow your parsley seeds out in the garden or outdoors, generally. You should not be worried about season limitations if you intend to grow your parsley indoors where you can create or have already existing warm conditions. For this reason, many people in cold climates simply grow and enjoy parsley grown in containers sitting in the kitchen or somewhere indoors.
So what do you need to grow parsley from seeds?
All you need, to grow your parsley from seeds, are the following items .
- You obviously will need the seed. Get this from your local garden store, farmers market or online.
- You will need some compost or compost mix or healthy soil as growing medium
- You may need some fertilizer but, for the most part, this won’t be necessary if you have a good, new compost.
- You will need pots/containers. This should be medium size – not too big not too small. Shown below, I have a 158 mm diameter pot.
With these requirements in hand, it’s is now time to start growing…
Step 1 – Prepare your pots or containers
The first step is to get your containers ready. One or more containers? I recommend using 2 or 3 containers. There is a reason for this which comes into play at harvest time. We will touch on this on the last step. Shown below is one such container. I use these types of pots on a variety of plants. What you have here is 158 mm pot in diameter and 150 mm in height. It also has a base to catch the draining water a good thing for growing plants indoors say in the kitchen.
It’s easy to overlook this, but ensure that your pot or container has some holes at the bottom for drainage. If your parsley roots are waterlogged due to poor drainage or lack of it, they will rot and the plant will fail.
Step 2 – Fill your pots with growing medium
Growing parsley from seed will require some good healthy growing medium. Next, get some compost mix or healthy soil to use as your growing medium. You will go ahead and fill the containers with your growing medium which should go up to the top leaving about 10-15 mm for your seeds and covering soil.
As you fill the pot with your soil or compost mix, sift some of the medium which leaving you with fine particles. Make this fine medium your final layer before you add the seed. Later in the following steps after planting our seed, we will again cover the seed with sifted medium. I use sifted soil for microgreens quite a lot. This increases seed contact with the soil and also reduces effort needed by the seed to germinate. The sifted medium is light.
Before moving on to next step, go right ahead and drench our medium with water. Let it run through the drainage holes leaving the soil in the pot or container thoroughly wet. Watering the pot at this stage without the seed will prevent the seed from being washed away if we did this after we planted the seed.
Step 3 – Plant your parsley seed
The planting takes place here. Take your parsley seeds and sprinkle it across the top of the soil in the pot or container. Do this for all the containers you have. Parsley seeds are indeed tiny, it will take some careful sprinkling to achieve an even spread of the seeds. The last thing we want is to have seeds germinating crowded in one section of the pot.
Step 4 – Play this trick on your parsley seeds
Ever come across the term scarification? Well scarification simply refers to the “weakening, opening, or otherwise altering [of] the coat of a seed to encourage germination”. This is well practiced in agricultural science and there are different ways of doing it. It can be done mechanically, thermally or chemically. The whole point is that some seed types are naturally hard coated and this makes them impervious to germination triggers such as water and gases. This delays germination and may compromise the quantity of germination.
Parsley seeds also wear this coat, as you probably deduce from the seeds image above. Thus after we have sprinkled the seeds on top of the soil in the pot as we did in Step 3 above, we are going to scarify them. Take hot water and gently pour it over the seeds. In this case we are using the thermal method. Not to worry, this won’t cook nor burn the seeds as it were.
Now go ahead and cover the seed with some sifted soil that was left over in Step 3. This should be a fairly thin layer that won’t give the seeds much trouble to lift during germination. Mist spray the covered seeds with room temperature water.
By scarifying the seeds we have significantly increased germination rate and shortened the time required for our parsley seeds to come around. We have effectively shortened our parsley’s route to kitchen so to speak 🙂
Step 5 – Cling wrap parsley pot/container top & set aside
We are now at Step 5 and wrapping things up. I hope how to grow parsley from seeds is abundantly simple as promised. We must now wrap the top of the pot with a thin plastic film. We do this to contain the moisture and keep the planted seeds warm enough. You will recall we mentioned that the opposing factor to the success of your parsley growing project can only be cold.
Alternatively instead of using a plastic film as I did here, a piece of glass that can sit atop the pot or container will also work just fine. The clear part of thin film or glass is to allow light to penetrate. We ought not to cover the pot or container with anything that discourages light to pass through.
Step 6 – Set aside in a warm place the pot with parsley seeds planted
Take the covered pot or container and place in a warm place with light i.e not in the dark. This light can be natural light. Keep the pot in a place offering a 15-20 degrees celsius (60-68F) environment. Note that with the top covered for moisture retention, it is not expected that you would need to water the seeds again until they germinate.
Should the need arise, perhaps after noticing the soil drying for one reason or another you may go ahead and mist spray the pot. However, on the whole, you will not need any further watering once the seeds are planted.
At about a week to 10 days, thanks to the scarifying, you should witness some germination which progresses quite well from then on. At this point, the main goal has been achieved…germination. Let the seedlings continue to develop before you consider the next step.
Step 7 – Transplant the seedlings to garden and thinning
Once they start germinating, remove the covering once the first leaves appear and water the seedlings on a regular basis making sure to avoid over watering. After the seedlings show signs of being well developed, it’s time to move them to the garden if this was the plan. Else you may let them progress into mature parsley right in the pot or container.
If you feel the seedlings are rather too crowded (remember you don’t always get it right with spacing at planting stage), you may want to thin them a bit by pulling out some leaving good air circulation.
The thinned out seedlings should not be a waste, they can be planted in the garden, in other pots or even given away. The parsley seedlings remaining in the pot are for indoor growing whether in winter or summer.
Step 8 – Harvesting parsley grown from seeds
Once your seeds germinate, the seedlings will progress fairly fast. In no time you should parsley ready for pickings. The way I recommend you do it is cutting off a few leaves at a time. Some seasoned gardeners recommend taking a 1/3 of the leaves at a time. This is advice I also agree with.
You won’t need to take much from one pot at a time, the reason why we have 2 or so more pots. If you have 2 other pots you will also take a 1/3 from each which is generally a good amount for your own kitchen. Harvesting a few of your parsley leaves at a time will allow the plant to recover fairly easily and fast.
In case you harvest more than you need, I also did a good write-up here on how to store herbs in the fridge. This will apply to all other fresh herbs beyond parsley thus it is a good read.
Summary of How to Grow Parsley from Seeds
If you just want to pick on the steps to take on the surface without reading the details (although I recommend detail), here is a summary of how to grow parsley from seeds.
- Prepare your pots or containers
- Fill your pots with growing medium
- Plant your parsley seed
- Scarify your parsley seeds
- Cling wrap parsley pot/container top & set aside
- Set aside in a warm place the pot with parsley seeds planted
- Transplant the seedlings to garden and thinning
- Harvest your parsley grown from seeds
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