How to Grow, Harvest, and Store Basil

Do you love pesto? Store-bought pesto is expensive and high in sodium. With a little work you can have pesto and other basil dishes all year for a tiny fraction of the cost, and with as much or as little sodium as you desire.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A piece of sunny ground at least four square feet, or four large planter boxes you can put in a sunny location.
• Some good topsoil, or a purchased bag of topsoil.
• A bag of composted manure
• A packet of Sweet Basil seeds
• Two large bowls
• A blender
• Olive oil
• Many small freezer containers or margarine tubs
• A freezer

1. As soon as danger of frost is past, dig the ground and put the purchased topsoil on top, or fill planter boxes with topsoil.

2. Add the whole bag of manure and dig it in, but not too deeply. Three or four inches is deep enough. Smooth the surface with a rake or your hands.

3. Ignore the spacing requirements on the seed packet. Use the side of your hand to make shallow grooves about 6 inches apart.

4. With fingers, sprinkle seeds into grooves, about 1/4 inch apart. Push a little soil over the seeds and pat it down. Water gently.

5. Keep well watered and weeded. Basil plants will appear within two weeks. When they are about an inch high, thin to about an inch apart.

6. While the plants are growing, you can pick leaves now and then for fresh basil in recipes, but don't pick too many from any one plant.

7. When flower buds begin to appear at the tops of the plants, pick them off, but when they grow too fast to pick off, the basil is ready for harvest. Pull up all the plants by the roots, cut off and discard the roots, and take the plants indoors. Do this on a day when you'll have several hours free.

8. One plant at a time, remove each leaf, discard the ones that strike you as unhealthy looking (funny colors, black spots, lots of insect damage, etc.), and put the leaves in a large bowl.

9. When the bowl is about 1/3 full, fill it with water and swoosh the leaves around with your hands. Pull the leaves out, put them in the other bowl, and repeat the process. Empty the water out of the first bowl and rinse it. In this way, transfer the leaves back and forth, washing them each time, until the water is clean.

10. Fill the blender about 2/3 full of the washed leaves, packing them down (no need to dry them) and add some olive oil. Blend, adding olive oil as needed, until you have a thick, green paste. Put about 1/2 cup of this in each small freezer dish or margarine tub.

11. Repeat steps 8-10 over and over until all the plants are stripped and all the leaves are gone. You should have anywhere from 8 to 30 containers full. (If you like to use small amounts of basil in recipes, put one or two containers worth in ice cube trays instead.)

12. Cover, label, and freeze. Containers will last at least four years, but you will probably use them sooner. Basil in ice cube trays probably will start to dry out sooner.

Tips & Warnings

• Each container will make enough pesto for 2-4 people.
• When growing basil, don't use pesticides or herbicides. It won't all wash off, and you'll end up ingesting it.
• When stripping leaves, throw away any that have obvious bird droppings, which can carry disease. After handling them, wash your hands with soap before continuing.