What Do I Do With the Flower Heads on Flat-Leafed Parsley? (2024)

FAQs

Should I let my parsley plant flower? ›

Leave the inner stalks and leaves, so the plant can keep growing. The second year, the leaves will be sparse and may be less flavor-intense. You may use them, but you may also let the parsley bloom. Bees love the blossoms.

Bolting usually occurs when the weather goes into overdrive and rapidly heats up. The plant does the same, flowering rapidly and setting seeds. At this juncture, the plant also stops producing leaves.

For plants like parsley, you can cut the flower stalk off and pinch back the plant to encourage foliage growth. The same goes for basil. Snipping off flowers encourages the basil plant to resume producing leaves, halting further bolting.

Cut off your parsley's flowers for a bouquet, pull it out, toss it in the compost and start over. Parsley grows quickly from seed, or, even faster, buy inexpensive little parsley plants from the nursery. You'll be pleased with how fresh the young leaves taste, and they'll grow in rapidly.

Can I harvest parsley after it flowers? Once it flowers, the leaves won't taste as good. So it's best to harvest the entire plant when parsley it starts to bolt. You can cut it at the base to collect all of the remaining stems at once, or pull the whole plant out of the ground before cutting them off.

You may like to remove the old parsley plant as this will give you the opportunity to add some compost or blood and bone to the soil prior to replanting. Some seed will emerge from your own seeded parsley plant and extra seed can be sown. Once the seeds have germinated apply some Yates Yates Thrive Natural.

Parsley is a biennial, not a perennial. What that means is that it grows into a plant one season, and after winter's cold temperatures, it blooms, sets seeds, and dies. The better idea may be to replant in spring, letting it grow all summer and winter.

Heat. The heat of summer will trigger parsley to bolt, and if the summer is very warm, the plant is likely to produce flowers earlier than usual. Pinching off the flower buds as soon as they appear can help to lengthen parsley's growing season and give you leaves to harvest for several more weeks.

Parsley bolts, but that doesn't affect the flavor of the leaves, so you can let parsley go to seed. The seeds do overwinter, so you can have more parsley next year. The parsley flower is ugly, but edible.

Herb plants grow lovely flowers. Although many have edible blossoms, it is not a good idea to allow your herb to flower early in the growing season. Once a plant flowers, this is the signal that its life cycle is about to end. Your herb is making a flower, then a seed, then it dies back for that season.

What does parsley look like when it's ready to harvest? ›

Harvesting Parsley for Leaves

Check the plant to make sure that stems have three segments or more. If you find three or more leaf clusters on the stem, it is ready for harvesting. Otherwise, it's best to let it grow for a few more days before you start harvesting.

"Flat leaf tends to be easier to control, and it isn't as tough," says Jason Potanovich, chef instructor of the American Bounty restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.. "It became a trend—flat-leaf parsley made an entrance, and curly got left in the dust."

You can eat the stems of parsley, but they are much more bitter than the leaves, so I recommend just using the leaves for most recipes. By placing all stems together, you can easily remove them in one quick cut.

Mint, parsley and rosemary are all hardy plants that will survive even in the snow. However, cold weather will reduce their growth, so you should limit the harvest. If you take too much, the plant may die. Make sure your pots have good drainage – waterlogged roots will rot and die.

Native to Mediterranean Europe, the parsley plant is a biennial, but is usually grown as an annual in home gardens. After the first year, the leaves tend to become more bitter and tough, but the plant will gladly reseed itself in temperate zones.

If you need to keep your parsley longer than 3–5 days, freezing it is your best option. The herbs won't be sprightly enough to work as a garnish, but they'll definitely work when stirred into an herb sauce, a pan of scrambled eggs, or a pot of beans.

Harvesting parsley is very similar to harvesting lettuces or greens. You're going to start with the lower leaves from the outside of the plant. Cut at the base of the plant to include the stem (instead of just cutting the leaves) in order to stimulate more growth from the center of the plant.

Parsley grows best when cut back on the inner stems.

If you don't take part of the stem, then the stem will dry out and won't regrow and you want your plant to keep growing all season long. If you do just pinch off a leaf, it will dry in just a few days, so go ahead and trim that stem down.

Parsley contains chemicals that can make kidney disease worse. Surgery: Parsley might lower blood glucose levels and could interfere with blood sugar control during and after surgical procedures. Stop using parsley at least 2 weeks before a scheduled surgery.

Is bolting the same as flowering? ›

Bolting is when plants produce a hearty, nutrient-gobbling flowering stem before harvest. This occurs as a natural attempt to produce seeds – a means of survival when a plant is put under stress and feels that it is in danger. For this reason, many gardeners will also call this dreaded behavior “going to seed”.

More Uses for Parsley Flower

The entire parsley plant, thick stalks included, is edible. When the plant flowers, you can use the flowers in the same way as the leaves. Use the flowers as a garnish or mix them into your pesto, tabbouleh, tzatziki, salsa verde or chimichurri recipe just as you would the leaves.

Once they bloom, the leaves lose their flavor. I prefer to snip off all the flower buds so that the plant lasts longer. Once the plant flowers it will start to make seeds and stop producing leaves. Cut parsley and chive stems close to the base, about an inch from the soil.

Herb flowers have their most intense oil concentration and flavor when harvested after flower buds appear but before they open. Herb flowers harvested to dry for craft purposes should be picked just before they are fully open.

Parsley is best picked as needed, cutting the stems at the base, so that new leaves grow back quickly. You may want to grow several plants so that you can harvest from one while another is left to produce new growth.

Harvest flowering herbs like basil, sage and thyme before their flowers bloom. Once they bloom, the leaves lose their flavor. I prefer to snip off all the flower buds so that the plant lasts longer.

Herb plants grow lovely flowers. Although many have edible blossoms, it is not a good idea to allow your herb to flower early in the growing season. Once a plant flowers, this is the signal that its life cycle is about to end. Your herb is making a flower, then a seed, then it dies back for that season.

Just as with other herbs, parsley likes to be snipped, which encourages additional growth. Bunch the stems and leaves together and snip them off at ground level with kitchen shears. You can also just take a sprig or two starting with the outside stalks first. Be sure to cut at ground level though.

How do you harvest parsley without killing the plant? Simple—just take what you need each time you harvest. Don't cut the plant all the way back, and don't pull the plant—just snip off a stem or two or three, and your plant will keep producing parsley all season long.

Once a plant begins to bolt, there's not much you can do. Cutting off the flowers won't do any good, so it's better to just let them go to seed. Bolted greens are still totally edible (and even healthy for you, Segale says—throw a leaf in your tea!), but they will have a more bitter taste.

Can you eat flowering herbs? ›

Most herb flowers are safe to eat and generally taste like the herb leaves. Remember, when an herb is flowering, it sends a lot of its essential oils into the bloom to attract pollinators—so even small, tiny florets or little flowers can be strong in flavor.

Tie them into small bundles and hang them to air dry. Air drying outdoors is often possible; however, better color and flavor retention usually results from drying indoors. Tender-Leaf Herbs — Basil, oregano, tarragon, lemon balm and the mints have a high moisture content and will mold if not dried quickly.

A good rule of thumb for most herbs is to water about once per week. During extreme heat or drought conditions, sometimes twice per week will be needed. Water in the cooler hours of the morning, between 6 – 10 am, to avoid evaporation and allow for deep root soaking.

For producers, flowering of culinary herbs such as basil, cilantro, mint, oregano and watercress is usually undesirable, since vegetative growth can stall once flower initiation occurs.