Basil is the star of my herb garden. It's so easy to grow, it loves our summer heat and grows like crazy. Prune your plants and they will grow bushy and provide lots of flavorful leaves.
 |
| Dark Opal Basil |
Pinch off the stems with flowers - ideally, you should do this before the flowers appear, before it looks like this - so that you can continue harvesting the leaves through the summer. You want to keep your basil from flowering and going to seed.
 |
| Photo by C. Allison, used with permission |
(By the way, none of these are affiliate links. Some links are to my own posts, others are to other blogs or websites that I thought you might enjoy.)
1. Dried Basil - take cuttings, remove the leaves from the stems and dry the leaves. See How to Dry Homegrown Herbs for easy instructions on how to do this. Pack the dried leaves into a jar, or several jars, and crumble them as you need them.
2. Use dried basil in almost everything: sauces, soups, seasoning mixes, and more.
3. You can - and you should - make pesto. I've always used walnuts instead of pine nuts because I just can't find pine nuts out here in rural America.
4. Freeze chopped basil leaves with water in ice cube trays. When you need some basil flavor in a dish, just drop in a couple of cubes.
5. Make basil sorbet - you could add lime or lemon or even strawberries.
7. Sooth insect bites and stings with a chewed-up leaf of basil, just like you would use plantain.
8. Make spinach and basil noodles. This recipe looks easy!
9. Add basil to your daily green smoothie. This one pairs basil with blackberries.
10. And the obvious, add it to salads, sandwiches, or sliced tomatoes with homemade mozzarella cheese.
Then let your basil go to seed in the fall. The seeds are easy to collect, they are in little round pods that you can open by rubbing them together in your hands. Keep the little black seeds to plant next spring.
 |
| Left to right: sweet Genovese, dark opal, cinnamon, and purple basil, all growing in my herb garden this year. |
You might also enjoy:
Ten Ways to Use Basil
How to Dry Homegrown Herbs
DIY Cayenne Pepper Powder
Harvesting the Herb Garden
~~~~~
My hope is to inspire you, and to encourage your homesteading plans and your dreams of a
I adore Basil and love your ideas here. I have not started saving seed yet from my garden but this one will be my first. I have so much basil and should be able to collect much. I had Chocolate Basil icecream in Bloomington Indiana a few months ago and it was divine! I need to make some myself. Thanks for all the ideas; my basil is out of control! (in a good way!) Thanks for sharing on our Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop.
ReplyDeleteOh my, Debbie, that chocolate basil ice cream sounds amazing. I'm going to google for a recipe for that! Thank you for stopping by and for commenting.
ReplyDeleteI am more encouraged that it is possible to grow enough basil for pesto. Thus Far, I've not accomplished an abundance.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
izzi~avis
It is possible. Some of my plants did really well, and others not so well. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's where they were located...? Keep trying. :-)
ReplyDeleteBasil is by far my favorite herb, and lucky for me there's an abundance of it growing in my garden! We've made pesto with our basil about ten times this year!
ReplyDeleteThat was a lot of basil, Margaret! You must have a basil-friendly green thumb.
ReplyDeleteOh I LOVE basil! It grows so easy, and smells soooo nice! I had an abundance of it last year that we're still working on, I dried it and also put it in ice cube trays with olive oil and froze it. I've used it in stewed tomatoes, soups, in most recipes actually. The kids enjoy the area where the basil is, it's close to my oregano plants, and we call it my "pizza" garden! LOL!
ReplyDeleteComing over from Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth.
"The Pizza Garden" - I love that! It must smell wonderful, Mrs. Abella. Thank you so much for stopping by.
ReplyDeleteWe use sunflower seeds in our pesto. It's delicious and much cheaper than pine nuts!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea, Angel! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteOur basil didn't do well this summer. It's going to seed now, so I will be saving some for next season. Did you know that you can make a pesto without any nuts. It's called Pistou (it's French) and it's delicious!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your wonderful outdoor post on The Maple Hill Hop!
I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing, Daisy!
ReplyDeleteJust stopped in from Tuesdays with a Twist. We love homemade pesto. I like to make fresh tomato soup with frozen pesto cubes melted in it. It makes the soup so rich.
ReplyDeleteThat does sound rich and delicious, Jan!
ReplyDeleteGreat post - just love basil! I do appreciate you sharing with Home and Garden Thursday,
ReplyDeleteKathy
What a beautiful dog and post, I actually had a herb garden this summers lots of different basils. Love if you share this on Fabulous Friday Party
ReplyDeletehttp://www.simplenaturedecorblog.com/fabulous-friday-partyfall-features/
Maria
Thank you for the invitation, Maria, I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteI think I like it with the mozzarella best of all!! Thank you for sharing at the Art of Home-Making Mondays this week :)
ReplyDeleteI agree, Jes, it's delicious with mozzarella and fresh tomatoes!
ReplyDeleteLove this post - so many great tips and thanks for sharing at Tuesday's with a twist - I'll be featuring it this week at Garden Up green. Hope to see you there!
ReplyDeleteCarole
Thank you, Carole! I'll stop by - thank you for the feature!
ReplyDeleteSo happy your shared the amazing basil post on Fabulous Friday Party
ReplyDeleteMaria
I enjoyed the party, Maria. Thank you for hosting it.
ReplyDeleteI've grown basil for the first time this year and over time my plant has grown fairly big. I actually know fairly little about herbs and was wondering if you could give some advice. Since I live in Australia we still have a few months of summer growing left. Can I cut down about half my bush to use for pesto and the remainder survive? Also if it starts flowering or goes to seed do the leaves still taste the same? I also planted a rosemary plant this year and was wondering if I should do anything special to it other than take cuttings when needed. I do get some frosts over winter but am hoping it will continue to grow over the winter for the next season.
ReplyDeleteHi Therese, Yes, do cut down your basil plant. Cut it down about 1/3. The rest of the plant will continue to grow and you should be able to cut it again before winter. It's best to harvest it before the plant blooms; you can cut or pinch off all those flower spikes. It will grow better if you keep those cut off. After you harvest it the second time, before frost, let the plant bloom and produce seeds and then save those seed pods for next spring.
ReplyDeleteJust this morning, I was wondering if I should do something to the flowers (?) on the top of my basil. And then I read this. Sounds like I should pinch them off.
ReplyDeleteYou can do one of two things: pinch off the flowers so your plant will continue growing leaves and you can harvest them, or let the plant flower and produce seeds. I usually pinch the flowers until late summer and then let the plant flower so I can harvest some seeds before the first frost.
DeleteTo freeze you can simply lay leaves on cookie sheets in the freezer. When they are frozen put them in a zip lock bag and crush the leaves. You might need to leave the bag in the freezer and then crush a couple more times to get the leaves crushed up fine enough. No water, not ice cube trays. We use so much basil that I usually have a couple of gallon bags.
ReplyDelete