I was digging through my fridge the other day and found a zipped plastic bag with something green inside. It was parsley, its stems wrapped in paper towel. After closer inspection and a telltale buckwheat hull found inside, I could tell it was our parsley. From our garden. Harvested back in November.

And it was still as fresh as the day it was picked.

What kind of parsley are we using? Plastic?

No, not plastic. In fact, it’s one of those no-named varieties of flat-leafed parsley seedlings we bought from a pop-up garden center back in May. It’s the most gutsy plant we have in our community garden plot, and we couldn’t kill it if we tried. I planted pretty much every seedling that was broadcast-sown in the 4-inch pot we purchased, and every single plant survived.

Here are the growing instructions: Nothing special; water now and then.

I’m not kidding you. We did nothing special. And, as a result, the two rows of parsley grew into a small hedge. In fact, it’ll probably come back from the dead when the soil warms this spring.

How to prepare and store parsley

Just as the living stuff is indestructible, so too is the harvested parsley.

1. Gently wash the parsley with cold water.

2. Remove stems. Reserve the parsley stems for making vegetable stock.

3. Lay leaves flattish on a towel to air dry excess water. The best thing about parsley as a plant is that it’s sturdy—it’ll dry before it begins to wilt.

4. Once dry, store loosely in a plastic freezer bag in the refrigerator. (Tip: Use storage bags that are a bit thicker. I think that helps prolong the parsley’s life.)

We also stashed six or eight of these bags in the freezer, where it forms frozen sheets. When we run out of the fresh stuff, we’ll break off a corner of the frozen parsley sheet and add it to soups, stews, pasta, and so forth.

More importantly, this is what we DON’T do: Store the parsley wet, wrapped in a moist paper towel in a sealed bag. The humidity just seems to build up along the bag’s sides, eventually making the leaves black and slimy. Sure, we’ll do this if we’re in a hurry or we know we’ll use the whole batch quickly. But it’s not something I’d do for long-term storage.

Will our parsley-storage technique work with the store-bought stuff? I don’t know—we haven’t had to buy it in years.

And did I mention, we also have fresh dill from the garden still going strong in the fridge, as well? It’s like a magic tomb, that refrigerator.