Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Planting Results

This past Saturday, I bought a bunch of basil from the farmer's market that still had it's roots. I posted about it here and asked all the gardeners out there if it was possible to plant it. The garden blogging community is awesome with sharing knowledge and giving planting advice. Y'all didn't fail me, and left me comments to go ahead and plant it or put the basil in water. I decided to try both to see how it goes.

Half of the bunch was planted. Here we are 4 days later, and this is what the planted basil looks like. I've been watering it a lot to make sure it drinks up as much water as possible. I pinched off some of the leaves / stems but it still looks a little droopy. After I took this photo, I pinched off more leaves. I hope it starts to recover soon.
The other half of the bunch, I stuck in a mason jar of water.  Wow, what a difference! The leaves perked up, and look great! I'll keep the basil in the water on my kitchen counter and use it in meals. I've never done this before, so this makes me super stoked! How long can it keep in water? Does anyone know?

3 comments:

  1. It should keep quite a while if you keep pinching off the leaves. Make sure none of the leaves are below water, or they can get slimy and really stinky. Don't ask how I know this ;-) I'd change the water occasionally, too. Once it looks healthy and the roots start growing, you can pot it up. You can also cut back those stems a bit more, and put them in water. They'll likely root and give you even more plants. Make sure you have a stem joint under water....and strip off any lower leaves (stinky, stinky!)

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  2. Change the water daily, and it'll be fine for a while, or at least until the plant starts to feel nutritionally deprived. As for the plant you potted up, it's thirsty: dunk the pot in a bucket of water until it recovers. The roots have been out of soil for a while and have lost the habit of sucking up water, so you need to submerge them for a few days before they pick up the habit again.
    Neither plant will keep indefinitely though: they've already been ripped out of the ground once, so they know that summer's coming to an end, and they will start going to seed, at which point the leaves will thicken and become bitter. Best to make pesto and freeze it before the flavour gets too strong.

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  3. The one you planted should come back. But it might look droppy for a bit while the roots establish. Give it time.

    KK

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