Around the Garden: Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

alphaccino.art (61)in #gardening • 4 years ago

TFW You start seeing results from your effort.

Basil, cutting

Another day, another gardening win...

Above is a picture of a cutting I took from a basil plant that I've had growing for the past several months. My daughter absolutely loves pesto, so naturally basil was the first herb that I knew I wanted to grow.

To start with, I'd kept the plant indoors and it started growing quite tall and lanky. At the time, I was really worried about whether it would even survive so I didn't dare pinch out any leaves and it never really got the chance to bush out.

Fast forward to just over a week ago when I decided to take a cutting from the top of the plant, to see if I could get another plant growing. After watching a couple of gardening videos, I decided that the best method to try would be a water propagation; this just means placing the cutting into a container of water until the plant develops roots.

Personally, I like this method because I prefer to make sure I have healthy roots before planting out in soil.

Basil, water propagation

We've had some heavy rain for the past couple of days and I've started collecting rain water to use on the garden. The water that I was using to propagate was still only 'regular' tap water, so this morning I decided to change it out for some fresh rain water, thinking it will be interesting to see if it makes a noticeable difference.

whenever I use tap water on the garden, I imagine the plants melting like the wicked witch from 'The Wizard of Oz'...!

Need buckets!!! Send More Buckets!!!

When I first looked at the basil today, my heart sank because it had drooped quite a lot since yesterday and I wondered again, whether it would even survive... BUT to my surprise, as I pulled the cutting from the bottle... I discovered that a healthy strong root had finally started to grow, putting my mind at ease.

Ahhh, what a relief..!

So now, along with the rain water, I'm sure that the basil will continue to flourish and hopefully, we'll be making our own fresh homemade pesto, sooner than later.

Until next time... xxx