Growing Perennial Basil From A Cutting??

Hey everyone, what is your preferred way to cultivate or grow plants? Seedlings, Seeds or cuttings? Well I have never done this before but out of necessity I thought why not? I gave it a bash. I recently cut off some perennial basil from the main plant which is years old. This is a fantastic winter feed plant for the bees as well as a magic herb for cooking to be used in anything from stews to pasta!

I cut a few branches off and put them in water in the hope they would root and was pleasantly surprised to see that it happened.

I did some research on wikipedia.com and it really is rather interesting. As per Wikipedia:

A plant cutting is a piece of a plant that is used in horticulture for vegetative (asexual) propagation. A piece of the stem or root of the source plant is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil. If the conditions are suitable, the plant piece will begin to grow as a new plant independent of the parent, a process known as striking. A stem cutting produces new roots, and a root cutting produces new stems. Some plants can be grown from leaf pieces, called leaf cuttings, which produce both stems and roots. The scions used in grafting are also called cuttings.[1]

Read this article further here...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(plant)

Bees are also totally crazy over lavender too so I tried the same technique, sadly for now they have not sprouted but I shall leave them in this water a few more days and hope for the best.

I must say for a first try this worked out quiet well. I initially cut some plants off my Aunt's older Basil plant out of around 10 cuttings only 2 shot roots. I then got back to the plot and cut another 10 odd off a younger plant and all of them shot roots.

I have a few still in water that need to be transplanted and I have put 4 odd in soil. The secret to this is for the first few days in soil and as the plants are used to been totally submerged in water, water PLENTY so that the roots take quickly and as not to dehydrate the plant.

I am currently busy with another experiment with a cannabis plant, check out my last post, but as it does not have bark on the stems I hear may not work?

Here I took the few that had successfully sprouted and carefully planted them into pots to further develope their root system. My plan is to plant them at one of our sites with around 9 hives. The nice thing about that site is it is in a Blue Gum Forest, there are also many macademia nut trees in the area. With this as an added foraging plant for the bees the honey promises to not only flow prolifically but taste incredible too.

Above and below the cuttings which has sprouted roots I planted into pots to mature a little more before transplanting close to the Macademia Nut Tree's!

Once planted at our other site I plan to take pics and blog the updates, be sure to stay tuned for that.

Have a super cool Thursday.

Cheer$;)