Growing basil is surprisingly easy and cost-effective, offering abundant harvests with minimal effort, contrary to common misconceptions that it's complicated or expensive to buy.
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well hello everyone and welcome to
another complete growing guide here on
the my gardener channel i am shocked and
cannot believe that we have not done a
complete growing guide on this but
alas uh the people in the youtube
comment section maybe even you have been
pestering me to do a growing guide and i
thought i thought i did a growing guide but
but
maybe i didn't who who knows so we're
doing it now this one's on basil and
it's a really easy one so i know you all
are going to love it and i can i can
guarantee you that it's going to get you
growing basil because i think a lot of
people overcomplicate it i don't know why
why
but i think a lot of people just prefer
to buy it from the store which again
totally confuses me because of the fact
that it is so expensive and we're
talking a couple sprigs for three
dollars uh no you can go take a hike for
three dollars that's ridiculous because
when you see how much we have growing
here you're going to say okay i could
probably grow a plant because the thing
is we actually don't even maintain this
stuff it really once you get it in you
give it what it needs it is so
self-maintaining there's just a few care
tips that i'm going to show you all
that's going to really help you out and
you don't have to do them to have a
successful basil plant
but it's going to help you out with your
production and overall
overall production and overall health of
the plant so
the first thing we're going to talk about
about
is uh kind of what you want to plant
when it comes to basil now
the typical varieties we have some
purple right here beautiful we have some
thai basil here we have some we can't
yet see because it's probably buried
beneath the
other basil varieties we have some spicy
glow basil there are thousands of
varieties of basil and so you really
want to kind of mix and match for your
own personal preferences there's more
unique culinary varieties that we love
because we love those unique culinary
flavors but the more typical varieties
that i would recommend starting with are
your sweet basils or your genovese
basils those are really easy go-to
varieties that are going to grow for you
now i'm not saying that your thai basils
or your spicy glow basils
aren't going to be for you but they can
be a little more tricky i'm not gonna
lie there they are a little more
hands-on care and if you're gone for a
while you'll see what i'm talking about
in a second when it comes to care but
the flavor is well worth it if you can
take care of them so just keep that in
mind but again if you're looking for
something for like a margarita pizza or
you're looking for something for
spaghetti sauce stuff like that it's
going to be your sweet basils or your
genovese basils your very italian style
basils so just keep that in mind and the
next thing we're going to talk about is
sunlight so when it comes to sunlight
basil needs at least four hours of sun
and we've actually talked about basil in
some of our other videos about five
plants that you can grow in shady in
shady areas basil does not need that
much sun it will like it and i will say
it will like it if you can give it more
sun so we give it about 10 to 11 hours
of sun which is
a lot of sun but you can do fine in any
any more than four hours now prefer
around five hours but i know a lot of
times people want to grow in a
windowsill or want to grow it in a
shadier part of the garden that might
not get that much sun maybe underneath a
tree if you're growing permaculturally
and that's fine it grows great in that
type of environment and
it grows where other plants might not so
give that a shot if you have that type
of sunlight requirements now the next
thing i want to talk about is watering
when it comes to basil you need to keep
up on your watering it is drought
tolerant to a certain extent because it
is grown in more mediterranean climates however
however
the basils really don't like to go that
dry you'll find they go to flower very
quickly and flowering is not a problem
as we'll talk about with some of our
care tips but it just it helps to kind
of keep up the plant and you'll find
that some of your varieties you actually
find that as you grow we'll show you the
varieties we got growing on here and
you'll find that some of those varieties
do better in more drought tolerant
situations and because here we only get
up to water about once a week once every
two weeks and we let the rain pretty
much water everything else and we have some
some
we have some
some straw cores as what i was trying to
say so we have some straw cores in the
center of these garden beds that help to
retain water but for the most part they
they do go dry in between waterings and
especially when it's that when it's this
dry like it has been here in michigan
um so some of our varieties are are
showing those signs of you know hey i
would prefer to maybe be watered a
little more frequently and then there's
the varieties that you can see that i'll
also show you that are like hey you know what
what
what do you mean no no water come on i'm
doing just fine so those are varieties
that i might suggest starting
for the beginners
now the next thing that i want to talk
about is fertilizing
when it comes to fertilizing your basil
it is not a necessity basils they don't
require that much nutrients to grow but
they do grow better and they do grow
bigger and produce more
if you give them a fertilizer that's
slightly higher in nitrogen we give
everything trifecta plus because it's
our go-to all-purpose fertilizer for all
of our plants
but if you want to use something that
you have around the house just make sure
it's a little bit higher in nitrogen
because it does focus on leaves pretty
much basil you're looking at leaves if
you're not harvesting for the flowers
you're not harvesting for the roots
you're not really doing any of that kind
of stuff so a little bit higher in the
nitrogen category it's going to focus
the nitrogen to put out more leaves so
as you can see here this is our italian
sweet basil this is more of what i was
talking about this is not even going to
flower at all it is kind of starting to
go to flower but it's really just
continuing to grow amazing for us this
is the italian large leaf basil the
genovese basil we actually have in
another bed but it's it's very
comparable in size and and
you know drought tolerance
just over you actually see that they're
starting to flower these are the spicy
glow basils these are hands down the
most hands-on uh type of basil to grow
simply because
they require lots of pruning and we'll
get into pruning in a second which is
one of our care tips that you don't have
to do but it really helps with the
production and overall health of the plant
plant
so as you can see here they they're
doing great
regardless of of what you're seeing with
the flowering
what i wanted to talk about with this
shot here is the spacing the spacing is
really important you want to make sure
that your plants have adequate air flow
but make sure that you're not spacing
them so far out that you're really not
getting what you want out of your beds
the basils that we have here are planted
about five to seven inches apart
depending on the variety some of our
spicy glow basils they really like to
get large and bushy big big bushes of basil
basil
whereas the italian large leaf basils
they typically grow up and kind of out so
so
where we have a little more spacing in
those we don't have as much spacing
where we give them we have the the
bushing varieties a little more space
and some of the the kind of growing up
the upright ones i don't know what to
say the ones that grow straight up and
not as far out we could cramp them a
little bit closer there hopefully that
made sense so this is what i was talking
about when i said that the basils will
eventually go to seed inevitably it's
going to happen everything goes to seed
but certain basil varieties will go to
seed a lot faster and what happens is
the fragrance of the herbs the fragrance
of the leaves will begin to diminish and
the production of the leaves will begin
to diminish because of the fact it's
actually focusing not on growing leaves
but instead i'm going to flour this is
great because the honeybees absolutely
love this so if you're planting these
for pollinators the honeybees go nuts
over these plants i cannot tell you how
many honeybees we have just swarming
these plants but i also want to keep
them growing throughout the season
so what we're going to do is we're going
to come down because you'll notice that
they start to branch they start to fork
and what we want to do is we want to
basically come through here and pick out
anything that has got
these shapes focus
focus
there we go we want to we want to take
out anything that has these little
flowers here because you'll you'll find
that when you let the flowers grow
it will stop growing period
so what we want to do is just take off
all these and this is what we're talking
about with the care you know
it's not as
it's not as easy to grow as some of your
other ones because
not only does it produce a lot of
flowers you have to pinch off it also
produces them very frequently so this is
one of the ones you you don't want to be
someone that goes on vacation and
expects you know a nice bushy basil
plant when you come back because if
you're not here to pinch off these
flower stalks and keep it trimmed into a
nice bushy shape
it's going to go wild for you but if you
are someone that is home a lot it is a
very rewarding plant to grow because of
the fact that it is one that a lot of
people do not grow for this reason and
so it's typically ones that you see in
specialty herb stores that are
you know eight nine dollars for for a
couple sprigs and
that's really all it takes to take care
of that plant and this is gonna be good
for about two three more weeks it's
gonna push a lot more side growth it's
gonna about double in size and it's
gonna looks like some of our bigger ones
that we've been maintaining a little bit better
better
needless to say the thai basil is
similar you have again a plant that
really loves to to blossom out it looks
fantastic and it's beautiful when it
flowers because it's got these gorgeous
purple flowers
and it puts out actually purple on the
leaves where it begins to flower however
that's not what we really want we really
want lots of basil and not a lot of
flowers because
this early in the season we don't want
them to go flower yet because it's going to
to
i mean yes the bees will have a heyday
but it's going to
go to flower later on in the season we
let all of our basils go to flower at
the end of the season where the bees can
go crazy on them and we can get seeds
from them but right now we want actually
to harvest leaves so it's important to
keep picking them
keep picking the flowers away now i did
think i'd mention i will be taking these in
in
basil flowers are edible they're very
delicious and they're actually more
fragrant than the plant is because like
i said those essential oils kind of they they
they
begin to um
kind of condense in the flowers to
attract the pollinators to that scent so
where the leaves kind of begin
diminishing the flowers and buds begin
really picking up some of that basil
aroma so
i can just smell the air is just full of
it already it's almost noxious how how
insane the the stuff smells but the last
thing that i i did want to talk about
was when it comes to the temperature
basils do not like that cold temperature
they like it to be warm now basil can
tolerate 40 degrees just fine but they
don't prefer it i like to make sure i
put my basils out when it's about
anywhere between 45 and 50 degrees at
night so it's going to be later in the
season i typically plant mine around
memorial day memorial day is a lot later
than most of our other plants go in the
ground but it makes sure that the plants
are going to be off to a good start
because you'll find that if you plant
them in cold weather
they'll be very stunted and they won't
grow very well and that goes for any
basil variety whether it's a spicy glow
basil a thai basil or an italian large
leaf basil
now once they are started and they are
growing basil will grow up until the
first frost it will continue to grow and
i've actually had some basil varieties
survive a first frost once they get
established it's just you don't want to
put them out when it's cold because once
you start once you start bad they
typically are stunted throughout the
season but that's really it when it
comes to growing basil it's a very very
easy one to grow and a lot of people shy
away from it i think because maybe it's maintenance
maintenance
maybe they just overthink it i have no
clue but hopefully this showed just how
easy it was a little care goes a long
ways and you can have some nice fresh
basil on on salads and pastas and oh man
it's just it's one that you have to grow
to try you just have to grow it so that
you can understand just how amazing it
is so hopefully you all enjoyed
hopefully you all are growing basil if
you are let me know in the comments box
below how you're doing with it
and also uh let's check out all our
other growing guides we have so many of
them i think we have like 20 or 21 now
they're all over on emmygardner.com you
can go to videos and select growing
guides or you can check out our playlist
here on youtube
but go check out our website as well
because we got lots of blogs and other
cool free information for you over there
and it's going to get you growing bigger
going home so i'll talk to you all later
hopefully you all are growing bigger
going home this is luke and i'll talk to
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