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What are the best conditions for basil to grow? I live in the UK and it never seems to last that long. Recently I've been putting the plants in the shade and drenching them in water, which seems to be working so far.

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There is one magic tip to prolonging the life of a basil plant: Pinch the flowers as soon as they appear!

Plants such as basil basically just grow till they flower and then stop. As far as the plant is concerned, it has crossed the finish line and there's nothing left for it to do. So when you keep taking away leaves for your culinary needs, you're weakening the plant.

On the other hand, by pinching the flowers, what you're doing is effectively pushing the finish line forward, so the plant still runs towards it. So you'll get new growth every time you pinch them off and your plants will be lush and last longer.

Here is a nice illustration from this site that shows where to trim the flowers to encourage growth. The article is a good read too!

enter image description here

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    Does this also go for other plant, for example spinach?
    – HelloGoodbye
    Jun 14, 2014 at 16:28
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    Don't forget to pick the larger leaves first, allowing the smaller ones to grow. Along with pinching the flowers and not watering later in the day this will help you get the most out of your basil.
    – stemie
    Apr 29, 2015 at 7:18
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Additional to the other answers, basil famously doesn't like to be damp overnight. Water mornings, not evenings.

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    ooh thanks for this this. I always water everything at night, will have to start finding time to water my herbs in the mornings.
    – wax eagle
    Jun 9, 2011 at 12:38
  • I believe that it's best to water most all plants in the morning rather than night. Watering at night makes them wet all night, which is promotes disease. This goes for grass, vegetables, etc. I personally like using a timer to water very early in the morning.
    – Marty Fried
    Apr 1, 2012 at 5:19
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    How do we know this to be true? I have 3 varieties of basil that are sopping wet every night, either from dew or from rain. The plants grow so well, I've resorted to freezing my pesto, since I simply can't eat it as fast as it grows.
    – Randy
    Aug 3, 2013 at 14:00
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I am attempting to grow Basil for the first time also, but mine seem to be doing pretty well. From what I found basically they needed a to be planted in soil that will drain well. In a quick google search I found this site that added a few other things:

  • will not survive indoors
  • susceptible to cold and frost, and to drastic temperature change
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    I've also read that temps below 50°F can damage the plant -- it may not recover.
    – bstpierre
    Jun 8, 2011 at 19:57
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    I've got basil indoors and it is surviving if not thriving. The main problem seems to be that my pot doesn't drain well, not that the plant is indoors.
    – Jon Ericson
    Jun 8, 2011 at 22:08
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    My indoor basil is doing really well because it's at the eastern window sill above kitchen sink and we don't draw a blind on the window except midsummer so gets loads of sun.
    – Lisa
    Jul 21, 2011 at 7:37
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    Plant may not do well in soil indoors, but to say it won't survive isn't necessarily true. Example: basil can easily spend it's whole life indoors under growth lights in a hydroponic setup.
    – WienerDog
    Feb 17, 2012 at 14:52
  • Nonsense. My basil is still growing like a weed in the compost it came with from the supermarket, and after I hacked almost all of it off to go into the freezer, it's come back with a bang within a couple of weeks. It's thriving indoors.
    – Tom W
    Nov 3, 2013 at 11:27
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Basil, and herbs in general, do not need to be fertilized. Consider that basil grew well in Mediterranean geographies in the crags of rocks. So don't overwater, fertilize, or put it anywhere but in full sun.

Also, @yoda is 100% right, you have to keep on top of pinching the flowers off. But as a rule of thumb, if it has been a while, never remove more than 1/3 of the foilage at any one time.

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Some things I've noticed about basil:

  1. Basil is deep-rooted. I have medium size basil plants in fairly large pots (pots which originally contained 5ft pears trees). The basil roots have grown out of the drain holes and anchored the pots to the ground. Basil roots can easily exceed 1ft in depth.

  2. Basil can root from the stem like tomatoes. I discovered this while observing a sprout that had a dead spot in the stem which dried to a thread and cut off the root system from the leaves. Yet, the leaves looked healthy. It was confounding. Figuring the leaves must be drawing nutrients from the stem which was touching the ground, I covered the stem with soil, and now it's a full-size basil plant. Since this discovery, I hill-up my basil plants like I do tomato and potato plants. It may be possible to propagate basil by cutting off a stem and sticking it directly into the ground. Tomato plants will grow this way.

  3. Like tomatoes, basil doesn't care much for an overly acidic soil and appreciates a good supply of calcium for strong cell development and magnesium for the abundance of chlorophyll it produces. My basil responds well to lime, calcium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, and potassium sulfate (calcium, sulfate, magnesium, and potassium are the minerals most leached by rain, in that order).

    From The World's Healthiest Foods we can see basil has a "very good" rating next to calcium and iron and a "good" rating next to magnesium and potassium. The 59 mg Ca + 12 mg Mg + 96 mg K must come from somewhere. Minerals aren't manufactured.

  4. Any suggestion that basil doesn't like water is absolutely false. We've had record-breaking amounts of rain this year. April, May, and June were 10 inches each and we had 15 inches for July. That's a year's worth of rain in 4 months and double or triple the annual rainfall of western or mid-western states. In spite of all this water, a few days I ago I had to add 1 liter to each plant in response to wilting. The plants perked up the next day and resumed growing gangbusters. The basil was the only plant I observed wilting due to lack of water, leading me to believe basil is particularly fond of water.

  5. Basil is salt-sensitive. Too much KCl can wipe out a stand. The big bags of 10-10-10 and 13-13-13 are not worth much as fertilizer.

Additionally, there is not a night that passes without my basil being sopping wet... either from rain, dew, or my spraying with a water hose. If basil doesn't like to be wet at night, it's hard to tell from the overwhelming production of leaves occurring on Genovese, Sweet, and Large-Leaf basil.

If basil doesn't like to grow indoors, it's probably because of a small pot, lack of light, not enough water, and lack of humidity (central air and heat dries the air).

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    I'm a newbie balcony gardener and Basil is my favorite herb to grow. It likes water and would even tolerate being slightly wet all the time although well-draining soil is ideal. I grew a sweet basil from a cutting when my main plant was only a few inches tall. I put it in water to let roots grow but it looked like it was near death after a few days. I put it directly into soil and amazingly, it lived! Similarly, a stem dropped off my holy basil (tulsi) for no reason. There were small bumps at the stem's base. On a hunch, I stuck it in soil and it grew impressively long roots in just a few days
    – user2602
    Aug 9, 2013 at 11:34
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    @Tintin Yes, that's similar to the observations I made. Cover a stem with dirt and it will grow roots. Tomatoes will do the same. You can pull a sucker off a tomato plant, make a hole with your finger, stick the stem in the ground and it grows another tomato plant.
    – Randy
    Aug 9, 2013 at 20:16
  • I've rooted store bought basil in water. Nothing happened for about a week then almost overnight it sprouted many thick white roots.
    – Phil
    Nov 2, 2016 at 20:44
  • +1 Never underestimate the value of a larger pot. It makes things so much easier for so many plants. However, other needs need to be met, too, to make it worthwhile (e.g. sun, water, etc.); ideal plant care isn't the same for every container. What's best for a plant in a tiny pot isn't what's best for a plant in a huge pot, nor vice versa.
    – Brōtsyorfuzthrāx
    Mar 4, 2023 at 7:34
  • For example, tiny pots dry out faster and are less suitable for strong sun (because it makes that problem more severe). Large pots can potentially be problematic if the sun isn't strong enough, unless the plant is pretty big for it.
    – Brōtsyorfuzthrāx
    Mar 4, 2023 at 7:45
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In the past it has grown almost like a weed in our pots on our deck here in North Texas. Admittedly we deliberately help it to re-seed itself: we grow it as an annual and winter frosts kill it. The location is hot (often 100F+) and full sun in the afternoon, but they do take quite a bit of water. So perhaps shade is the wrong thing?

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Basil is a great companion plant. Have a search for 'basil' on this list of companion plants to see what's good to plant nearby.

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