How To Grow Basil

Basil is great in salads, sandwiches, casseroles and, of course Italian dishes so learning how to grow Basil can be a great way to get a fresh herb for many of your dishes.

Growing Basil is really quite easy as long as you have the right temperature and levels of light. You can grow basil from seed pretty easy and an easy way I found to do that is with a peat pot and an herb kit like I have shown in this video:

When choosing a pot for your Basil plant, you should make sure it has enough drainage. You can do this by ensuring it has a large enough hole or you can put course gravel in the bottom of the pot to act as a reservoir.

If you are sowing the seeds right in the ground, you must make sure that all threats of frost have passed. You want to sow the seeds thinly. If you are sewing in pots, put in enough seeds for a few plants and then you can thin out the weaklings later on. Make sure that you cover the seeds with a bit of soil and water thoroughly.

One of the important aspects of learning how to grow Basil is that it must get 6 to 8 hours of sun each day. So, if you are growing in a pot, you need to place that in a sunny window. Outdoors, of course, you need to pick a spot in your garden that gets sun for most of the day but that is also sheltered from harsh winds.

Your Basil plants should be watered a couple of times a week and fertilized every month. When watering, be sure that you don’t splash water on the leaves as this can encourage fungal growth and disease. Just water at the base of the plant near the soil.

In order to get the best flavor from your basil, you want to pinch off any flowers that grow on the plant. This will allow the plant to use all it’s energy on producing those wonderful basil leaves and will make them more flavorful.

Once you’ve learned how to grow basil, you can have a fresh supply on hand at all times. If you grow it in containers indoors, it will grow all year. You want to make sure you have several plants going and harvest by plucking the top most leaves of each plant at a time. That way the plants will keep producing year after year.

If you liked this tip on growing basil, then you will LOVE my free newsletter and, if you sign up today I'll send you my gardening tips report for F*R*E*E!

Don't worry, I hate spam just as much as you do so I would never give your email address to anyone else. I'll just use it to send you a link to this free report as well as more great gardening advice!