How To Grow Basil And Make Pesto Sauce

Basil is a wonderful herb that is a delicious part of both Asian and Western cuisine. I'll show you how to grow great basil.

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Basil is a relative of mint although mint is a perennial and basil is a warm weather annual and easy to grow from seed.

There are many types of basil such as Thai basil noted for its unique flavor, Purple Opal basil that boasts glossy magenta foliage and lavender flowers, and spicy Globe basil that grows in a compact mound and that's just to name a few.

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Basil grows best in six to eight hours of sun and it tolerates a wide range of pH from 5 to 7, but its absolute favorite is 6.4 pH.

If you want to start your basil indoors do it about six to eight weeks before the last frost.

Basil can also be direct sown after the last frost. Sow the seed evenly. A seeder can help a lot dealing with the small basil seeds.

Cover the basil seeds with about one-quarter inch of soil or compost. Keep the bed moist while the seeds are germinating and don't worry if you have a low germination rate, that's kind of normal for basil.

Keep the area weed free. You can tell the basil seedlings from the weeds by the basil's distinctive D-shaped leaves born opposite to one another.

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Add a loose and light straw mulch on your your basil plants. Basil likes even moisture. Don't over water or it won't taste good, but under watering can stunt the growth.

Use drip or hand water the plants at the base, basil plants do not like overhead water.

Harvest your basil as needed. Start by pinching off the fresh young leaves. If you want to take a whole stem just cut it back to two leaves and that way your basil plant will continue to get bushy.

Pinch out the flower stalks as soon as you see them unless you want the flowers for your salads or if you're growing an ornamental basil like Purple Opal.

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Leaving the flowers will make the plant a little bit woody and that will affect the flavor, making it a little bit bitter tasting in the leaf.

Towards the end of a basil plants life it will flower faster than you can pick the flowers off. If you leave some of the flowers to go to seed, you'll get plenty of seed for planting next year.

Basil seeds are easy to harvest, collect and save for the following season. Just gather the flowers when they look almost dead, let them dry a little bit and hold them over a plate or tray while crumbling the flowers. The small, black seeds will fall to the tray where you can collect and store them in a cool, dark and dry place until you're ready to plant them.

Basil is an annual so it will eventually flower and die so you can't stave off the flowers and seed heads forever. As soon as you pick or cut your basil put it in a vase of water to keep it fresh then you can preserve it by either freezing it or drying it.

To dry it hang it upside down in small bunches leaving it hanging for a week in a warm, dry, well-ventilated room.

Freezing basil is another great preservation method and frozen basil tastes more like fresh basil. One freezing method is to chop up the basil and then add a little bit of water and put it into ice cube trays. You can also put small quantities of fresh basil in plastic bags and then store them in the freezer.

You can also freeze basil in oil. Just chop up about a quarter of a cup of basil and add two teaspoons of olive oil. Drop spoonfuls on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper and freeze once this mixture is frozen. You can put the spoon fulls into a bag for easier storage. Use frozen basil within one year.

My very favorite way to store basil is to make pesto sauce and lots of it. It's really easy to make and it will store for about a year if you freeze it afterwards, but it never lasts that long around our house no matter how many gallons of it I make in a year. That's right, gallons!

Pesto can be used on more than just pasta too. It's good on toast, eggs, meat, chicken and just about anything you can think of. I have even made a basil martini a few time and they were delicious.

How To Make Home-Made Pesto Sauce

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup fresh basil leaves
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled Coupons
• 3 tablespoons pine nuts
• 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
  Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 1/3 cup olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

To make the pesto, combine basil, garlic, pine nuts and Parmesan in the bowl of a food processor; season with salt and pepper, to taste. With the motor running, add olive oil in a slow stream until emulsified; set aside.
Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. credit

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Growing basil (and other herbs) indoors is easy as long as the plants are getting sufficient light. If basil doesn't get six to eight hours of direct light they can get leggy and they don't taste as good.

Often you'll get enough light from a south or south west facing window if you keep your plants in the window sill. Be sure and turn them every couple days towards the sun if it's not enough light. It's easy to supplement with a little bit of fluorescent lighting.

The Health Benefits Of Basil

The many benefits of using basil and basil oils in your diet cannot be overstated. It supports your heart and liver health, is loaded with antioxidants, improves your digestion and makes your breath fresh, it's antibacterial, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory, packed full of vitamins and minerals and helps detoxify for system. Besides all that it tastes great!

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You can never grow too much basil and it works great in hydroponic and aquaponic systems. I once grew basil in an aquaponics system and it was the largest basil plants I have ever grown or seen. You can read more about how I grew 100 lbs of fish and 80 lbs of vegetables in 16 square feet here!

Grow some organic basil for yourself and see how easy it is.

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