How to Cut Basil

We are in the hottest part of the summer and most of the garden looks pretty tired.   However, one plant that excels at this time of year is the herb, basil.   It seems to love hot weather and, as long as one keeps it watered, it grows non-stop.....which can be a problem if we miss a Saturday at the market and it does not get its weekly hair cut.  When it is not cut frequently, basil produces flowers, like this:

When basil flowers, its energy goes into making seed, instead of leaves.  And, because it is the leaves that you want, this is a bad thing.

A couple of years ago, we were gone for a while and my basil patch looked like this:

Overgrown Basil

The flowers are not large or showy, but the bees loved them and we love the bees because they help pollinate our crops.  

At any rate, we were gone for a few days last week and missed the Saturday market.  When we got back, I had to give the basil a severe trimming.  Here is a picture of a plant "before" it was trimmed:

And here is what it looked like after I finished:

Don't worry.  It will regrow quickly.  The  point is that you have to practice "tough love" to keep it producing those wonderful aromatic leaves.

So, here is what you should know when trimming your basil plants.  When you look closely at a basil stem, you'll see that it has smaller branches coming off the main stem.

It is important to cut the main stem just above where the smaller stems are growing.  So, if I were going to cut the stem above, I would make my cut about 2 inches to the right of my thumb.  See below.

If you follow this method, then the two smaller stems will grow  large and produce more leaves.  Thus, you get twice the number of leaves as you have on the original stem.  Not a bad deal.  It is like doubling your money!