As you no doubt know, Basil is a great herb! It can flourish almost anywhere in the world, and is really easy to grow!

It’s an essential ingredient in most of your favourite recipes, you can add it as a finishing touch to any dish and it even looks great as a garden or kitchen decoration!

Here’s some great reasons why you should consider growing basil at home:

– Simply put, basil is just the best cooking herb! You can use it in all kinds of dishes, from the simple but magical combination of tomatoes and basil to the equally delicious home made pesto and thai curry – its a great addition to many dishes!

– Your kitchen will radiate a subtly sweet fragrance once your basil is established, or give the same great aroma to your outdoor garden

– Also, because of this strong scent basil tends to repel annoying insects such as fruit flies. It confuses them and makes it difficult to find all your tasty plants.

– One simple reason – it looks great! While some have interesting spiky-shaped flowers, there are some kinds such as opal basil that have rich, deep purple flowers that look fantastic. Still other kinds have flowers that are tight curled balls..

– It’s also said that basil has great medicinal properties, used in traditional practices.

OK, so you’ve made up your mind to grow some basil yourself. Where to from here?

Now then, first of all be sure to pick the sunniest spot you can as basil doesn’t do as well in the cold! After that you could either purchase a ready made packet of seeds, or if you can if you like, purchase a box of seedlings. Another alternative is to take a small cutting from another plant, either one you find in the wild or from a friend’s garden. Be careful though, if your going to plant the tiny basil seeds watch out that the weeds don’t grow over the top of them as they can take a few weeks to germinate! In the case of cuttings merely collect a sprig off of any healthy plant at any point in the year, then remove all of the larger leaves but leaving only the smallest ones nearer the top, and simply place in a well watered pot. If you keep it in a warm but shady area, and keep it moist it will root nice and fast. You can transfer it to the garden as soon as it has established itself and is growing again.

The more fertile the soil, the bigger and better the leaves – no surprises there. While some plants don’t like a lot of food, and some even grow spindly and of a poor useful quality, basil thrives with as much food as possible. To keep up leaf production, you should give your plants healthy doses of liquid fertilizer, old tea bags and other kitchen waste and chicken poo as often as you can. Put simply, the more you feed the more you can pick! Unlike other kitchen herbs that do best if you feed them sparsely, and lose their flavour if you overfeed them, basil does not.. It’s impossible to feed basil too much! Basil will use all you give it and more! If your looking for some ideas about what to feed your hungry basil plant : You can use any old food scraps, shop-bought fertilizer, animal poo, leaves, mulch, compost, almost anything really! For the tastiest basil, try and feed it as often as possible.

If your soil is not the most fertle, don’t worry. Basil has a deep and strong root system.. The roots will go and find the nutrients the plant needs. So you can still grow plenty of basil even if your soil quality is poor. It can also do well with not a lot of water and sunlight, although will do better with these two things. But of course, it’s flavour will be the strongest and it will generally grow better given full sunlight

Well now you know what to do I hope you decide to spice up your herb garden or kitchen with some great basil plants!

Alex Jollands is a herb gardening enthusiast, and co-owner of the extremely popular website [http://www.homeherbgardens.info] – a free resource for all you’re herb gardening needs.

Feel free to check it out.

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