Growing Garlic and Parsley Indoors
Answered by: Inge Poot
Question from: Kathleen Dinardo
Posted on: December 27, 2003

I was wondering if you could tell me the best way to grow parsley and garlic indoors? I live in Winnipeg and love to use fresh herbs in my cooking but would like to start growing my own and these are the two that I use the most. If you could let me know what would be the best way to grow them and in what types of pots would be best for herbs I would appreciate it.

Growing parsley indoors should present no problem. Put it in a pot as large as the foliage, keep evenly moist, but not soggy wet and give it as much light as you can for the lushest growth. Harvest the outside leaves as needed.

Garlic may be a problem. I think you would have a hard time to grow decent bulbs on a windowsill because of lack of light and you would have to grow the bulbs for the whole summer and then start using them after they die down in the fall. You can then store the ripe bulbs in the crisper of your fridge and use them as needed. In the spring they will start to sprout even in the fridge and you may at that point want to grow some of them for the foliage which is just as tasty as the bulbs. They are heavy feeders and need a deep pot and should be planted fairly deep- but for the windowsill leaf crop they can be planted about an inch (2 cm) deep. You might want to grow garlic chives instead. They need a bit (about a month) of freezing in the fall but then come back into growth on the windowsill and produce lots of leaves with a lovely flavour. They too need lots of sun.

We have answered similar questions before and posted the answers on our web-site http://www.richters.com under the "Q&A" heading in the "News & Info" section of the site. Click on "Search Question & Answers" and type in"garlic", to find the topics that sound as if they would answer any of your other questions.

Back to Growing Herbs | Q & A Index

Copyright © 1997-2024 Otto Richter and Sons Limited. All rights reserved.