Friday, August 20, 2010

garden fail friday: holy bolting biennials batman!

i was so happy with my parsley. i read that parsley seed would be slow to germinate (it’s of the devil, so it has to go nine times to hell and back before it can sprout, and that trip takes a while)...but every seed i started this spring germinated in under a week and nearly all of them grew into big, healthy plants that i cut from regularly for garnishes and hummus.

the biggest, healthiest flat parsley was getting crowded out and smothered by an unruly zucchini plant, so i transplanted it:

but this pot was too small, so i transplanted it again. after the second transplant i noticed a few of the leaves looking a little weird, much thinner and pointier than normal:

but i knew that parsley is a biennial and it won’t bolt until the second year.

fail.

yay more fail!

gone feral in idaho

3 comments:

Amy Farrier said...

Bolting parsley still makes a fabulous swallowtail caterpillar hotel. So, maybe it's not a fail, but a repurposing.

Goneferalinidaho said...

Whoopsie! My rhubarb bolted this spring. I didn't even know it would do that.

Emily said...

amy--very cool! i would be so happy to host a few swallowtail caterpillars.

goneferal--hehe, that sucks. damn these plants and their inconvenient drive to reproduce.