For those of you who like basil I have good news: growing basil in a pot is fairly easy. There’s nothing like throwing a couple of fresh leaves on your baked pizza or on your mozzarella and tomatoes breakfast.
Conditions for growing basil
Basil loves warmth and sun and medium to low humidity. So aim to have the soil rather dry. Give it too much water and it will rot and become yellow, frail or slightly “bloated”:
I tested one basil that didn’t rot from the above pot and planted it in the same pot, but changed the soil and kept in on the drier side. It thrived in less than 20 days and became greener and healthier (very similar growing conditions with the rosemary):
Why it is easy to grow basil?
- Basil sprouts fairly fast: 10 days in warmer temperatures and up to 16 days in colder temperatures.
- It doesn’t require any fertilizing.
- It can be grown in very small pots: I use almost exclusively cut plastic bottles, cover them in some newspaper and poke holes in them:
- Basil can be planted from seed but as well from shoots that are left in water for two weeks. The seeds sprout easily and they are easy to maintain, but a bit frail. The plant growing from the shoots is strong and healthy usually:
plants grown from seeds
plant grown from shoots, very strong and healhty
roots grown in water for 10 days - The plant offers you continuous harvesting. It is recommended to harvest it especially when the top of the plant forms leaves in a star shape. Prune your plant counting at least 4 leaves from the bottom:
before prunning
after prunning
before prunning
after prunning
before prunning
after prunning
before prunning
after prunning - You can have a plant and use its leaves for a long time. Stalks might start to become brown, but if you prune it and prevent it from flowering, you can keep your plant for more than 6 months. Here is my plant after 4.5 months:
How to store the surplus?
If you harvest more basil than you can eat, you can store it in a glass with water (by the way, this is how you grow roots from shoots, too), dry it in a clean and non sunny environment or freeze the clean and dry leaves on a paper towel:
One challenge for growing basil – insects
If you love basil, so does every other flying and crawling creature, apparently. Basil can be heavily attacked by slugs, snails, white flies, caterpillars, grasshoppers and bugs. I had literally all of them:
caterpillar damage
caterpillar damage
grasshopper damage
grasshopper damage
the types of bugs that can attack your basil at nightThe solution for this is either insecticide, or take it indoor on a sunny window sill or cover it with a net at night:
They usually recover fast from the attack and grow other leaves quickly. So if you manage to control the insects, basil is a very rewarding plant to grow and perfect for beginner gardeners.
If you would like to have another idea for plants perfect for beginner gardeners, check my arugula post here.