Fresh Basil from Cuttings - an experiment.

 With the approach of the Easter holidays comes the warmer weather.  Last year I invested in a polytunnel and had limited success growing Basil - despite numerous gardening articles that it is the easiest herb to grow, to be fair it is probably how I water it but there we go... I love basil and tomatoes and when I look at most of the recipes I have posted they involve this combo so to have my own basil would be a saving.  I have tried basil from the supermarket in "growing pots" before and they usually last a week if I am lucky.

So this time inspired by a YouTube video (of which there are many)  I am going to take cuttings from my supermarket basil.  If the worse comes to the worse I will have wasted £1.50, which is afterall the same as a pack of seed anyway.

Materials:

1 pot supermarket basil

scissors or snips to cut the stems to length

cups/jars/galsses to stand the cuttings in

water

a sunny windowsill

Snip the stems of the basil just above a leave node (ideally they should be about 4 inches long and have a couple of leaf joints along the stem.  Remove the lower leaves to leave a cluster of about 4 leaves at the top.  The remaining stem will sprout from the leaf node that you just cut above, the cutting will sprout from the leaf node that is in the water.  Leave for a couple of weeks, changing the water every day.

Sounds simple enough doesn't it!

Now I don't have a sunny windosill - but since I got paid £25 in Amazon vouchers I managed to snag a Growlight that I wanted for my pepper seedlings anyway so I will be snuggling the basil cuttings alongside and will update this post later with as it works for me - or not...

Day 1 - just started - still alive!

Day 7 - mother plant is still alive which in itself is amazing!- the cuttings however show absolutely no sign of any roots at all. :(

Day 20  - still no roots or any sign at all of anything happening.  By now we should at least have some baby tendrils forming.   Hmm......

Finally - May bank holiday weekend we have enough roots to try and plant them up!  All we have to do now is fight off the slugs.