Parsley is a pretty sought-after greens in any family. On each table at any time of the year you can see a salad, a sandwich, a soup with the addition of fragrant green twigs. Those who begin to plant parsley for the first time often face the fact that it grows thin, rare or weak. Let's figure out how to properly grow this tasty and healthy greens.
Parsley Planting Area
Parsley is a plant unpretentious to the characteristics of the soil. Although the fertile loose soil responds especially well to it. Parsley is a plant that feels great in areas of long daylight hours. It is preferable to take open areas for landing. But even in weakly shaded places, she feels absolutely normal. With proper care, you can collect a decent crop.
Parsley Planting Time
The plant in question is able to tolerate frosts well. For this reason, planting parsley in the winter will not harm the crop or seedlings. Therefore, in order to get an early harvest, many gardeners do just that. You can also plant parsley in the early spring. The choice is yours.
Methods of preparing seeds for planting
Parsley grains sprout for an extremely long time due to the high content of essential oils in them. As a result, it is much easier to prepare them in advance. Seeds must be placed for germination in the room, wrapped in a damp cloth or gauze. Also, experts recommend hardening grains. To achieve a successful result, the germinated seeds must be placed on the lower shelf of the freezer. In a week they can already be planted. The proposed method of seed preparation is perfect if you plan to plant parsley in the fall, before the cold.
Sowing rules
Soaked seeds must be given time to dry. After that, experts recommend sowing them in beds only in wet soil to a depth of a little more than a centimeter. Leave the distance between the rows approximately 20 cm, and between the bushes - no more than 3 cm.
If you have prepared the seeds, then expect seedlings in about a week, a maximum of two. Dry sowing material will germinate even later. To accelerate the emergence of sprouts, we suggest covering the bed with polyethylene. It will create a favorable temperature regime. You can remove it when shoots appear. Planting parsley in the winter is done only with dry grains to a depth of about a centimeter. Gardeners with experience are advised to mulch the beds with a layer of 2-3 cm.
The plant in question can be planted near carrots. Only here you can’t sow seeds in the area where this root crop was grown before. Good predecessors are cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, potatoes (early), garlic and cauliflower. Before planting parsley, you can fertilize the area with manure. It will have a beneficial effect on the quality and quantity of the crop.
Also, if you plan to plant parsley in the winter, then you need to take 30% more seeds than for the same procedure in the spring. This is due to the fact that no matter how hard they are tempered, not all the seeds will sprout. For safety reasons, it is better to sow more seeds than in spring or summer.
Seedling Care
In the future, parsley must be thinned, water. Also do not forget to remove weeds and loosen the ground. Gardeners recommend thinning parsley in two sets. The first time is when real leaves are noticed. Leave the plants at a distance of 2-3 centimeters between the bushes. Re-thin out the beds with greens, when on parsley already count 5-6 leaves. The distance between plants should be 5-6 centimeters.
Outdoor parsley cultivation
Planting parsley in the open ground is carried out in the spring. The beds begin to cook in April. For every square meter, add half a bucket of manure. If the clay soil is on your site, then experts recommend adding 2 liter cans of sand and sawdust to the fertilizer.
Parsley is preferably sown on loose fertile lands. The plant should be fed with nitrogen fertilizers, and gardeners recommend adding potassium and phosphorus to grow rhizomes. To get saturated greens, you can sow seeds at different times. The most relevant planting of parsley in the winter. It allows you to get an early harvest. Then comes the landing in April. Tasty greens will appear a little later on your table. And to get a good harvest until late autumn will allow summer planting of parsley. At home, the landing time does not matter much.
How to grow parsley at home?
Growing parsley at home is no more difficult than growing in a garden, or even simpler. To get the crop, you must follow a number of recommendations.
1. The type of parsley can be selected from the varieties offered to you in specialized stores. The only limitation is to give preference to early ripening species, as they ripen one and a half to two weeks earlier than the rest.
2. Boxes for greens should be quite large and capacious.
3. The bottom of the container must be covered by a few centimeters with a drainage mixture, for example, a small pebble mixed with expanded clay.
4. In the form of soil, experts recommend applying fertilized soil from your garden. Do not neglect the advice: in order to prevent the spread of harmful microbes, it is necessary to warm the earth in a hot pan or in the oven.
5. If you do not have your own site, you can take universal soil from the store.
6. Pour the cooked-up makeshift bed with warm water and tamp a little.
7. Grains before planting should be soaked for three days in water at about 38 degrees. The fluid must be changed every 12 hours. Soaking significantly increases the germination of grains.
8. Arrange shallow seed grooves (a little more than a centimeter deep) and inoculate them according to the advice on the packaging. But the distance between the grains can be narrowed. In other words, your seedlings will grow more densely than in the garden.
9. Sprinkle the grains planted in wet ground with a centimeter layer of soil.
10. Parsley is very fond of moisture. It must be watered with previously defended warm water every other day, in moderate portions.
11. When shoots appear, watering can be increased, but given the humidity of the room in which the crop grows.
12. A suitable temperature for the growth of greenery is 16-20 degrees. If it drops below, then growth will slow down, and if it rises, the greenery will dry.
13. Once a month, fertilizing with complex fertilizers will favorably affect the harvest.
14. For the growth of greenery, it is recommended to use window sills, which get enough light.
Who does not need parsley for the winter? Planting at home using an ordinary table lamp will allow you to fortify your diet in the cold months of the year. The lamp will help compensate for the lack of sunlight and get a saturated crop. The only condition is that the heat source should be at a distance of about half a meter from the seed box. Once parsley has grown more than 10 centimeters in height, it can be eaten.
Why is it better to plant in autumn and winter?
Planting parsley in the fall and winter is the most successful and promises a stronger and healthier crop. This is because the seeds that survived the cold become much more hardy.
1. The crop appears a few weeks earlier than from seeds planted in the spring. Under snow, plants survive the cold well, and in the spring they will have enough heat, light and moisture for rapid growth and maturation.
2. After harvesting, beds can be reused.
3. There is more time left in the spring to plant other crops.
4. The most frost-resistant variety is parsley "ordinary leaf".