Parsley as a vegetable rather than a herb

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a great plant that is highly nutritious, undervalued, and underutilised. It should be grown and used as a leafy vegetable. Like many people I grew parsley on and off for years. Like many people we initially used it as a garnish/herb so we didn’t really value this plant.

Parsley is usually biennial, meaning it grows leaves one year, then the second year it flowers and dies. This is frustrating because it means alternating years of feast and famine. Every second year is great for leaf production, and the alternate years are pretty light as the plants are flowering.

I say 'usually biennial' because it varies. Eventually some seed germinates late, or a plant flowers early, and you end up with a self-sustaining patch of parsley that always has some plants in their first year as well as some that are flowering.

Like many people I used to grow curly varieties of parsley, which demands reasonably high levels of attention for a small reward. Many varieties of curly parsley (there are many but most are unnamed) look pretty and have a relatively mild flavour. What they lack in productivity and taste they make up for in fancy looks. Hmmm, not a great trade off.

Parsley is relatively hardy though, and they drop a lot of seed, so while the first years you plant them and tend them and put in a lot of work to keep them going, eventually seed falls somewhere just right and they take care of themselves from there. Low productivity but no work is an ok trade off, so I kept growing parsley while never getting the most out of it or ever really appreciating it.

Eventually I grew some flat leaf parsley, I don’t recall when or why, and it changed the way I view parsley. The flat leaf varieties (again, there are many but they are usually unnamed) often grows much larger than the curly parsley, it produces far more leaf from the same amount of soil/water, and it has a stronger taste. We started using parsley in bread rolls and things as we had more of it.

Then we started using parsley as a vegetable rather than a herb, and began to value its highly nutritious leaves more highly. I am talking about using its leaves as a vegetable here, not the roots.

Regular flat leaf parsley on top, my parsley lower, 30cm ruler for scale

Somehow this became a slippery slope, and when we had enough parsley growing we would use its leaves as a spinach substitute in all kinds of meals. In my mind, this is how parsley should be used. Parsley should be a leaf vegetable.

The common inclination to grow fancy varieties that are low yielding, rather than highly productive flat leaf forms appears to be the only factor that is limiting this use. Many common plants that are grown as ornamentals were once important vegetables, I guess parsley is part way through this transformation from being a useful and nutritious vegetable to being just another pretty ornamental.

As we started using parsley as a leaf vegetable I started to breed bigger and better plants. I have never seen the point in growing food that doesn't suit me, I prefer to grow superior plants, if superior varieties don't exist then I will breed them myself. This has gone surprisingly well, it appears that flat leaf parsley still has the genes required to be a productive leaf vegetable. 

My larger parsley is not stable and seed grown plants still throw a mix of large, extra large, and huge leaf plants. Most of the giant leaf parsley varieties such as 'Giant of Italy' are puny compared to my improved plants.

My parsley is a monster compared to regular flat leaf parsley

As well as these improved plants I grew one plant that had massive leaves. At this stage I don’t know if it is a hybrid with skirret or if it is just the perfect parsley, but I suspect it is the latter. The plant had large leaves comprised of massive rounded leaflets, it flowered in its first year and produced copious amounts of seed. Even if this is not a hybrid it is displaying all the traits I want from parsley.

At this stage I don’t know what percentage of its seedlings, if any, will display the massive leaf and flowering in the first year traits. I allowed most of it to open pollinate and have sown a lot of that seed. I bagged a small number of flowers before they opened so they would be self-pollinated to see if many of them retain the massive leaf trait. I am yet to plant the self pollinated seed.

Massive Leaf Parsley - just a seedling

Perhaps one day I will start selling seed for my mixed giant parsley and my massive leaf parsley. When they are ready they will be listed on my for sale page along with various other interesting vegetables.