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My parsley seed collecting and saving project

Published on January 19, 2022 Leave a Comment

When I took this photo in April of 2020, these two parsley plants were approximately one year old. I was hoping to keep harvesting them throughout the whole season. Little did I know that just two weeks later they would start their seed-producing journey. I kept them anyways just to see whether they would set seeds. And they did!

It’s January as I’m writing this and the winter is in full swing. We already had snow twice and there could be more of it in the following days and weeks. It’s quite cold too. Temperatures at nights (and oftentimes during days too) regularly drop well below freezing point. That’s not stopping me from getting started with the new gardening season though. Right now, I am in the middle of creating my annual vegetable garden blueprint for the upcoming year. I am also thinking of doing the first (experimental) plantings…

What I’m also already working on is producing, collecting and saving my own parsley seeds. I have struggled with the bought ones for years. No matter how hard I have tried, I just couldn’t get them to germinate – at least the vast majority of them. I usually have to plant the whole bag just to get a handful of plants out of it. And it’s not just me having this problem – I heard fellow gardeners complain about it too!

That doesn’t seem to be the case with home-saved parsley seeds though. They seem to germinate much, much better. How I do know that? Well, I discovered it by sheer blind luck…

It all started in year 2019 when I noticed two parsley seedlings sharing a pot with recently-transplanted tomatoes. I had no idea how those seeds got there, but I was more than happy to keep them (May of 2019).

You see, about two years ago a couple of parsley volunteers showed up in a pot in which I grew tomato. I don’t know how the seeds got there, but I decided to left the plants there over the winter and see whether they would survive. I placed the pot next to the wall on the south-facing balcony where I usually raise seedlings. The plants started growing rapidly at the first signs of spring and I was able to get a harvest from them very early in the season.

Once the weather in spring warmed up a bit, the plants started to bolt (May of 2020).

I thought the plants would keep producing and we could keep harvesting them until the end of the season. But then, towards the end of April, they suddenly bolted. Their stalks were fully formed by the end of May. They started flowering by the middle of June. And by the end of October, the seeds were ripe for a collection…

The plants needed more than two months to go from bolting to flowering (June of 2020).

For some reason I didn’t collect those seeds though. The wind soon blew them off the plants. Some of them ended up in the same pot. Some of them ended in the nearby pots. And some of them ended in patio cracks and crevices. I didn’t know it until those scattered seeds sprouted and plants started to pop up everywhere – it was fascinating to watch those plants voluntarily show up in all those different places!

The seeds were fully developed in autumn. Instead of collecting them, I let the wind scatter them around (Oktober of 2020).

The difference between home-saved and store-bought seeds was obvious. While I was struggling to get the bought ones up and running, I effortlessly got tons of seedlings from the ones that came from a couple of no-maintenance plants I left growing in a pot as an experiment basically. That is why this season I am going to try and replicate the parsley seed-producing process I witnessed two years ago…

I kept the main pot and the plants that developed in it from those wind-scattered seeds. So, if all goes well, I should have the second generation of home-produced seeds collected and saved by the end of this gardening season.

I still have some of the plants on this photo growing in the very same pot. These sprouted in Oktober of 2020 and had not set seeds in year 2021. I do hope they will do it this year though!

About two weeks ago I trimmed the plants heavily and removed all their old leaves. Then I moved the pot into one of my miniature greenhouses. Icould have left it outside in the open and cold, and the plants would probably survive there just fine despite the winter weather conditions – they were already snow-covered twice this winter and did just fine. But I don’t want to risk anything so I’m giving them some extra protection…

I checked on them a few days ago and it seems that they are doing alright. Unless the weather warms up sooner than I expect, I am going to leave them in there until the end of February. Then I am going to move them out in the open again. I’m hoping to get a harvest or two from these plants as well somewhere in March. And once they start bolt, I am not going to bother them anymore and just let them do their thing. I’m hoping to have seeds in my hands sometime in autumn. Let’s see if I succeed!

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