Good Friday falls on the 21st March this year. Gardeners being no more superstitious than others – touch wood – many a tale is told of what might or might not be planted on this important day in the Christian calendar.
Potatoes for a start are most unlucky to plant on Good Friday. Absolutely right, too – even with winter woes in retreat it is too early by a few weeks. On the other hand, tradition had it that garlic sets planted on Good Friday would not only grow well but would be particularly potent. Risky when Good Friday falls as it does this year in March but when it arrive next month, not bad advice at all.
The prosaic truth about parsley, and other members of the Umbelliferae family, is that their seed coats contain a water-soluble growth inhibitor. This can only be removed by prolonged moisture. It can take up to four weeks for seedlings to emerge. Prior to sowing, experienced gardeners may soak their parsley seed overnight between layers of wet paper toweling to help overcome this reluctance to sprout.
However green-thumbed our parsley-sowing progenitors, they sought other explanations. Like rosemary, parsley was said only able to be grown successfully by the rascally, wicked or even a downright witch. It will only grow, maintained others, where “the wife wears the trousers.”
The slow emergence was explained away because the roots had to go three times down to the devil and back before pushing through the soil into the light of day. In fact, as does its cousins carrot and parsnip, parsley has a long taproot. This gave rise to the belief that it was unlucky to attempt to transplant. Some even believed such would result in death.
It should come then as no surprise that tradition holds that parsley seed is best sown on Good Friday in the hopes of averting any or all these calamities. Of course this time of year is usually somewhat moist, which can’t have hindered.
Rain on Good Friday, incidentally, was said to foretell a fine harvest of hops but a poor one for hay in Hertfordshire, England.
Superstitions notwithstanding, here’s some useful advice from Lincolnshire in eastern England. Those wishing to determine whether the soil was warm enough for sowing stepped outside dropped their trousers and applied bare buttocks to equally bare soil. If it was comfortable to sit thus, it was safe for seeding.
Any attempts at reviving this grand old practice should await nightfall on a moonless night. The neighbours and local gendarmes might not be quite so horticulturally inclined.
