As an Amazon Affiliate, I may earn a small commission from qualified purchases, at no extra cost to you. Ensure there is no air in the container and store the seed in a cool, dark place. If the flower stems are too woody to pinch (often the case with Thai basil), cut them off with shears. DRYING BASIL SEEDS You may not know that basil seeds can be eaten just as well as basil leaves. Use a piece of parchment paper so they don’t touch the metal and burn. Seed viability will be affected if the seeds are exposed to more than minimal light. Dry out your basil seeds on a drying screen in a warm space with good air circulation. I have done it on a few stems and have no clue if it worked or not. A temperature of around 75°F (24°C) during the day is optimal for Thai basil. Keep them in a cool, dry place to ensure they last a long time. I mean, unless it’s a hybrid of some sort. When you pinch back the stems to the next leaf cluster, you keep the plant from getting leggy and stimulate new growth. If you have a Twitter or FB account feel free to use the "Name URL" feature so other people can find you. Thanks for the tips MBT! I have a post all about it here. Great post and lovely pictures. With basil, pruning and harvesting are essentially the same thing. This mixture can be stored for about three days in the fridge in a container with an airtight lid. Sign up to get all the latest gardening tips! Serve over rice. Otherwise, once the basil flowering stems turn brown, carefully cut them from the vine for harvest. Do not have a blog yourself? You could see signs of rooting in as little as 7 days, but more reliably after about 10 days. of the member-only content library. Required fields are marked *. Gather them with your fingertips, and once you feel like you have enough seed for next year, you can stop. Occasionally (scuse the spelling) I buy herbs like watercress and even basil in winter and I just let roots grow and plant them in the soil and they usually do fine. A plant allowed to flower will soon go to seed, stop growing, and die, so be vigilant about removing flowers. I've been saving seed for years and love the recycling business of nature. A Complete Guide to Growing Herbs in Winter, How to Save Vegetable Seeds for Next Season, Plastic or paper bag (a used grocery bag works great). It’ll bloom and over time, it will dry out. These I just keep in cool, dry room in the house. Harvesting the basil seeds from among all the chaff can be a little time consuming because there will be a lot of chaff this way. They are very small, green when immature, and black when ripe. Taking cuttings this time of year is a good idea! This means my plants grow in a pot, under a light instead of the sun and that I have to pollinate by hand. Join Fine Gardening in upcoming webinars. Episode 3: How to Preserve and Store Basil: Pesto, Cooking with Basil: Thai Stir-Fried Chicken with Basil. Hi Jess , I find empty toilet rolls are great to start seadlings when they are readyyou can put them straight into the ground , the toilet papper roll will slowly desolve over the first month... That's a really useful piece of advice - thank you. You can also set them on a tray on top of the oven. pesto so you might think I'd grow basil. For longer-term storage, freeze your pesto in an ice-cube tray. Great info! Maybe next year I'll let some seeds mature. Are you sure you want to delete your notes for this recipe? Thanks for the information. Sign up for our newsletter. Last, stir in 1 ounce (1 cup if rasped, 1/2 cup if grated with a box grater) grated Parmesan cheese by hand. They're added to my list now though. Poke a few ventilation holes and let it dry out for a few days. Because you just let it go. In there I've archived all the seed saving and collecting posts I'm writing. I want to try a blue basil I saw next year. Usually, when a flower pops up on a basil plant, you have to pinch those little flower buds off as soon as you see them—it encourages the plant to bush out and keep producing those tasty green leaves. Get complete site access to decades of expert advice, regional content, and more, plus the print magazine. Thai Basil is best used in strongly spicy dishes. This is probably the toughest part of harvesting basil seeds. The purple ruffles basil I bought this year did not come true from see. It’s a win-win situation for you and for the plant. It was a small way to say thank you for the efforts…. It will extend the growing season, also some of the dark varieties of basil may not come true from seed. Get our latest tips, how-to articles, and instructional videos sent to your inbox. Get the full recipe for this dish on FineCooking.com. The longer you stare, the more you’ll get the hang of it. I like the cardboard ring idea as well. You can also put the dried seed heads into a paper bag and shake it, then crush the bag with a rolling pin, tip the pulverized plant material into a shallow tray and blow out the chaff. You might be interested: How to Prune Herbs. Look closely and use a magnifying glass if needed; they are pretty small.

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