Thursday 7 October 2010

Basil flowers

My Basil plants are still going strong -- I normally expect to be able to pick useable Basil until Christmas, and sometimes the plants survive well into the New Year -- it depends on how cold it gets. Even indoors, on my Dining Room windowsill, particularly at night-time, it can be a lot colder than Basil would like (being a Meditrranean herb).

One way to prolong the life of these plants is to stop them flowering. If you do this, more of their energy goes into leaf production. It seems a shame, because the flowers are quite pretty, but you have to decide whether you are growing the plants as ornaments or as edible herbs!

Here's a couple of photos of some Basil flowers before I pinched them out...



2 comments:

  1. Hi Mark
    Good to find you on Blotanical! I always make an attempt to pinch the flowering stalks on my basil, too, but often forget.
    Do wish I had an IT guy in my home, as I need tech support for both my blog and new web site. Alas, T. - who grows our veggies and cutting flowers at his allotment - has less techie know-how than me;-(
    Cheers, Alice
    aka Bay Area Tendrils

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  2. Hi Alice; My blog is outclassed by yours, which looks absolutely wonderful! Maybe one day mine will get to be as good? Although I work in IT I am not a techie, but I have help on hand because one of my daughters is a programmer. She has helped me with some aspects of my blog (as well as being a gardening disciple).

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