In March I sowed an entire packet of flat-leaf parsley from the hardware store rack, assuming half of it wouldn't come up. Parsley is famous for slow, patchy germination. This year it decided to prove a point. Nearly every seed sprouted, I couldn't bring myself to thin them, and now there are five pots of parsley on the porch bench and I'm handing it out in grocery bags.
The hottest seat on the porch
The bench came from my mom's old apartment, and it lives at the western end of our porch, where the herbs get the hottest sun on the property. From late morning until sunset the light hits the pots and then bounces back off the white clapboards behind them. On a 90-degree afternoon like Saturday's, the terra cotta is too hot to hold. It's the toughest growing spot we have, and I've come to treat it as a test.
Right now the bench holds fourteen pots, a mix of terra cotta and galvanized, and here's how this June has sorted them out.
Who loves it
The Mediterranean herbs act like they're on vacation. The rosemary came back outside in April after its winter in the coolest window of the house, and it has put on four inches of new growth. Thyme is spilling over the rim of its pot. Sage and oregano are both bushy enough that I trim them weekly just to keep them from shading their neighbors. They all live in terra cotta, which dries out fast, and they seem to prefer it that way.
The basil loves the heat too, but it wants water the way the tomatoes do. I sowed two galvanized pots of it right after May 20, once the nights warmed up, and this week they got their first pinch, just above the second set of true leaves. That pinch is what makes basil branch instead of shooting straight up. We had the first caprese of the summer on Saturday, with store tomatoes, which felt like cheating.
Who sulked
Cilantro, as usual. It bolted during the first hot week of June, going from leafy to tall, ferny and flowering in about four days. Mateo, whose official garden title is "cilantro duty," was crushed until I told him the seeds that form next are coriander and he could collect them. He is now very invested in coriander.
The recao is slow and small. My Abuela Ana grew it in coffee cans on her fire escape in the Bronx, beside her ají dulce, and she always kept it on the shady side. Recao wants moisture and some shade, and the bench offers neither, so this week I moved it to the far end of the porch by the screen door, where the afternoon sun doesn't reach until late. It perked up in two days. Abuela was right, as she usually was.
Keeping the parsley in line
Parsley isn't invasive the way mint is. It just grows faster than one family can eat it. Here's what I've been doing with five pots:
- Cutting the outer stems hard once a week, right at the base, which keeps each plant producing from the center.
- Giving bunches away. Joanne next door has taken three, and my coworkers have taken more.
- Freezing it chopped, in ice cube trays with olive oil, for soups in January.
- Leaving one pot alone. Last summer black swallowtail caterpillars found our parsley, striped green and black like tiny rugby shirts, and I'd like them to find it again.
Watering is the real work on the bench. Terra cotta dries out roughly twice as fast as the galvanized pots, so in this heat I water the whole bench with the galvanized can before school and the terra cotta again at dinner. Two more days of school, and then I can do it in my pajamas at a reasonable hour.
Pim, who is banned from the bench after an incident with a pot of thyme two summers ago, watches it all from the front window with the face of someone deeply wronged.
Next year it's one pot of parsley. I say that now, but I know I'll be holding a seed packet next March that looks very small.
Tonight it's chicken thighs with a green sauce that is mostly parsley. Again.
