Tales from the Garden 2010 - Basil

Hubby and I have been growing basil as many years as we have been married. Every year we put in one or two plants, every year we harvest a few leaves here and a few leaves there, every year we talk about getting enough leaves to make pesto, every year we have the mentality of waiting to harvest the plant, and every year our plants go to seed before we seem to do much with them.

Not this year.

This year we started by planting more - starting with 6 sweet basil plants from Zantopia (wonderful garden shop if you are ever in the area), and a basil plant I got from a class at RIT. Then my wonderfully green thumbed neighbor gave us even more. A whole bunch of little bitty basil plants she started from seed.

They all grew!So this year not only do we have a larger quantity of plants, but we have a bit more know-how. I did some digging around for the optimal way of harvesting basil, and came up with this great tutorial. So I started doing things their way - and the plants have been very responsive. We are 3 batches of pesto into the season - averaging about a batch a week - and I have only had to pinch off one or two flower heads. The plants are full and happy, and we have a growing stash of pesto cubes (pesto frozen in ice cube trays) in the freezer.

Lots of pesto recipes out there - we are currently enjoying this one. Yes - a recipe from another quilter - how perfect is that!

Now if only all my gardening troubles were that easy to solve!