Growing Basil

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Basilica heavenly fragrance

It is no coincidence that I started talking about this wonderful plant, because in the series of spicy herbs, it rightfully takes one of the first places, and for good reason. Its botanical name translates to "a fragrance worthy of kings." This is, indeed, truly a royal spice. In the legends of many peoples, basil was considered a symbol of immortality, love and family happiness.

This wonderful tropical plant grows wild in Iran, India, China, it is also found in the south of Asia, in Africa, in the tropical zone of America, here in Central Asia and the Caucasus. It was from the hot tropics that basil came to Europe in the XII century as a spicy and medicinal plant.

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In general, this fragrant spice has been known to people since ancient times. In ancient times, it was eagerly cultivated by the Greeks, then it came to Asia and enjoyed an extraordinary honor there. The famous medieval physician Avicenna recommended basil for both food and medicinal needs. It was brought to Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. Fresh basil leaves were preferred at that time as a seasoning for roasts, as well as in numerous sauces.

In the old Russian guide for gardeners you can read: "The younger the grass, the more fragrant and softer. Before it blooms, it is cut off, tied in bunches like mint, hung to dry in the shade in a place where it would blow; then they put it in boxes and pounded into powder, which is put little by little in sauces with other fragrant herbs. And in the stew it is supposed to be crushed … ".

It was said about the medicinal properties of basil that it "drives urine, drives out winds and breaks phlegm, benefits from chest diseases and strengthens the heart." It significantly improves digestion, has a beneficial effect on the gastrointestinal tract. This wonderful plant clears the brain and improves vitality. In addition, it purifies the air, has the unique ability to create negative ions and release ozone. That is why in European countries it has become widespread as a room culture.

In addition to its culinary and medicinal properties, basil has the ability to repel flies and mosquitoes, and is an excellent honey plant. Thanks to its wonderful aroma, and in a number of varieties and the unusual color of the leaves, it is also grown as an ornamental plant.

Today, basil is cultivated in many countries of Asia and the Mediterranean; the main exporters are France, Italy, Morocco and Egypt. Basil is one of the favorite spices of Italian cuisine. Most often there it is combined with tomatoes and spaghetti. In France, basil is added to sauces and soups (for example, it is an indispensable component of such delicacies as turtle soup and oxtail soup), in England - in cheeses, liver pates, stews, tomatoes. In the East, basil leaves are put in vegetable marinades, sauces as a spicy seasoning. Basil is known and appreciated in the Far East, it is especially popular in Vietnam and Thailand.

Irreplaceable spice

Basil can be safely considered the richest in aroma spice plant in our gardens. Different varieties have not only a specific basil smell. Shades of clove, pepper, anise, lemon aromas with a hint of tea and laurel make any dish where basil is added appetizing.

It owes its aroma to essential oils that accumulate in glandular hairs, located mainly on the leaves and calyx of flowers.

This plant is distinguished not only by its delicate spicy aroma, but also by its characteristic, slightly bitter-sweetish taste. Therefore, it is added to the prepared dish, just like any other spice, just a little.

Its popularity, for example, is evidenced by the fact that the majority of dishes, for example, among Caucasians, do not do without basil. It was from the Caucasus that the proverb came to us: "Whoever chews basil lives for a hundred years." Young shoots in fresh and dried forms are used in salads, sauces, soups, meat dishes (all kinds of stews, cutlets, liver, etc.), in fish dishes (boiled and aspic fish), as well as for flavoring canned vegetables, pickles and sausages, in various tinctures.

It goes especially well with tomatoes and eggplants. For example, I always add fresh sprigs of basil to any canned vegetables along with other herbs. Even ordinary boiled potatoes become tastier if you sprinkle them with this wonderful herb at the end of cooking. And when you open the pot with these potatoes in 5 minutes, your kitchen will be filled with a magical aroma. Basil is added to soups, sauces and main courses, mainly dried in powder form.

This spice is widely used in the preparation of various national dishes in Greek, French, Italian (in particular, in dishes from spaghetti, pasta and mushrooms) and Transcaucasian cuisines. Basil perfectly complements all other vegetable dishes of beans, peas, beans, tomatoes, spinach and cabbage. A few fresh basil leaves placed in a bottle of vinegar greatly enhance the flavor. This vinegar adds a spicy flavor to salads and white sauces. The crushed leaves are also added to green butter, omelettes, and crab salad. A pinch of basil leaves gives the lamb stew an unusually pleasant taste. It goes very well with garlic. Leaves of certain varieties (Lemon, Citron) can be used to flavor tea, wines, compotes, kvass, fruit drink and other preparations.

And the long-awaited peace and joy will come to your house

Basil is not only eaten. It is added to fragrant formulations of herbs for baths and rinses. It relieves fatigue, improves overall tone, and stimulates digestion. It has healing properties, helping with colds, runny nose, sore throat. To do this, brew 2 teaspoons of dry basil in a glass of boiling water, leave for 15 minutes, filter and take a tablespoon three times a day. Fresh herbs are rich in routine, carotene, vitamin C. It has a good soothing effect. Families who consume basil on a regular basis have fewer fights, which is so important in our time, which is by no means conducive to peace of mind. It is believed that it brings people a good mood, health and long life.

What does basil look like?

Common basil is an annual herb with a height of 40-90 cm. In principle, about 150 different types of basil are known in nature. But not everyone can be raised in our conditions. The leaves are thin, light green, there are also varieties with dark purple leaves and stems that look very impressive (I, having looked through about a dozen different varieties of basil, still prefer the Yerevan Basil, which I planted the very first among other basilicas for another 15 years back). The flowers are small, white or pinkish, collected in whorls in racemose apical inflorescences.

Growing basil

Basil is a resident of the hot tropics, and of course you have to put up with this. Just like that, in the Urals or other more northern regions, he does not like to grow, preferring to get sick with a "black leg" in the blink of an eye. This is especially true, of course, for newly emerged plants. Incidentally, I have never been able to save diseased plants, despite the regular use of biological products. Therefore, it is necessary with all our might to prevent such a development of events, and not to fight them later, which becomes, in fact, completely meaningless. However, it is quite possible to grow basil in the Urals, you just need to remember some of its features, which I will try to list.

1. Since basil is a southern plant, it needs a sunny and calm place in the garden. If planted in the shade, it will wither and lose its extraordinary aroma. You can also grow basil in the open field on high ridges protected from the winds. However, we don't have summer for the summer, and I used to have to keep basil in the cold summer for almost the entire season under covering material. And this did not protect against the death of plants when the cold August nights set in.

If they get sick, they can die in 3-4 days, and if you come over the weekend, you may not have time to harvest: all the plants will turn out to be blackened. Therefore, for a long time I have given him a corner in one of the greenhouses, because not so much area is required for this. But it grows reliably, without any unpleasant surprises. In addition, the yield from plants in the greenhouse is several times higher than the yield from plants planted in open ground. Therefore, I believe that it is more profitable to allocate a small "patch" of area for basil indoors than a large ridge in the open.

2. It grows only at sufficiently high temperatures (not lower than 20 ° C). The most comfortable temperature for basil is + 23 … + 24 ° С. This delicate plant dies at a temperature of + 1 ° C.

3. Basil prefers light and warm soil, filled with rotted manure. This plant is extremely demanding on soil fertility, it does not tolerate high acidity at all. Such conditions are easiest to create in a greenhouse. A good precursor to basil is crops that have had a lot of organic fertilization, such as cucumbers, squash or pumpkins. Therefore, I form the top layer in the greenhouse from the earth taken out in the fall from a cucumber greenhouse or a greenhouse with zucchini, seasoned with ash and a complex fertilizer like "Universal" (you can use "Giant vegetable" or Azophos), and the bottom one, as usual, I fill with rotting organic matter in the mixture with fresh manure. The top layer of the earth should be at least 15-18 cm, because the contact of basil roots with fresh manure is unacceptable.

4. High soil moisture is extremely harmful for these plants. In the blink of an eye, they are affected by leaf spot and die. Therefore, basil should only be watered with warm water and very limited. However, he also does not like drying out of the soil. Therefore, to preserve moisture, it is better to mulch the soil with leaf litter, needles, crushed bark or sawdust and water it only occasionally.

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Basil is very picky about the increased availability of nutrients, so during the summer it is good to feed it several times with organic and mineral fertilizers. Provided there is good fertile soil, I feed with liquid mullein and ash only after the next cut of the shoots for drying. Additionally, besides this, I usually do not feed basil. However, with a poor filling of the greenhouse, the amount of dressings will naturally increase. In addition, during a cold rainy summer, additional 2-4 fertilizing with potassium sulfate will be required. under bad conditions, the need for potash fertilizers increases.

Basil prefers very loose soil. Therefore, if you want to save yourself from numerous loosening, it is better to immediately mulch the soil around the plants. Due to the rather cold Ural summer, basil has to be slightly stimulated for more efficient development. For this purpose, I spray the plants alternately once every 14 days with the preparations "Epin" and "Silk". And to protect them from spotting, I spray them with "Immunocytophyte". Naturally, I do not dilute these preparations specifically for basil, but simply combine spraying basil with the processing of other thermophilic crops: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, melons, etc.

To protect the plants from the black leg, I water them three times with biological products: black yeast, rhizoplan and trichodermin.

Planting the basil

Option 1

Basil is usually recommended to grow under our conditions only through seedlings. In this case, around mid-to-late March, basil seeds are sown in the usual way in low containers. From my point of view, it is better not to soak them, because after that, they become covered with a layer of mucus (this is completely normal), and as a result, it is not possible to carefully plant them at more or less equal distances from each other. As a result, after the emergence of seedlings, a thorough vacuum is required, otherwise the plants will stretch out strongly, and then you cannot get high-quality seedlings. And the consumption of seeds is quite large. Therefore, I have long given up soaking basil seeds. At a temperature of 20 … 22 ° C, seedlings appear in 10-14 days, and at 30 … 35 ° C - twice as fast.

In principle, seedling care is the most common. Naturally, the soil should be very fertile and loose (adding sawdust and agrovermiculite is required). It should also be damp, but without waterlogging, because otherwise, you will suddenly lose all your plants because of the "black leg", to which the basil seedlings are not at all resistant. A prerequisite for growing seedlings should be weekly watering with solutions of biological products: black yeast (2 tablespoons per 1 liter of water), Rhizoplan (1 tablespoon per 1 liter of water) and Trichodermina (1 teaspoon per 1 liter of water). Only this, in combination with limited watering and good illumination, will be able to protect basil shoots from the "black leg".

Seedlings are planted only in heated soil far enough from each other (at a distance of 15-20 cm), given that the plants are highly branching. The timing of planting basil seedlings roughly coincides with the dates of planting pumpkin seeds.

Option 2

You can sow basil in early May directly with seeds in already heated greenhouses. It is advisable to mulch the soil immediately after planting. Naturally, additional shelter will be required, at least two layers of covering material (it will look like a triple shelter: two layers of covering and a layer of film of the greenhouse itself). Recently I have been using this option, however, the first harvest is obtained later, but the plants in the greenhouse practically do not get sick with the "black leg". At home, despite the use of drugs, I have repeatedly had cases of forced re-sowing of basil due to the complete death of seedlings. I have never had a similar situation with any other plant.

Collection and preparation of basil

As I already noted, the leaves are used for food (they have a more delicate taste) or the entire aerial part of the plant. It is better to do harvesting in several stages, and always in dry weather. At the same time, each time, only the buds that have gathered or the young shoots that have just begun to bloom are cut (at this moment they are especially fragrant). In this phase, the leaves and flowers accumulate the greatest amount of aromatic and other valuable substances. Therefore, for the preparation of dried spicy seasoning, the leaves are cut off at the beginning of the flowering of the basil, and the peduncles that appear are removed.

Cutting early will allow you to remove several "harvests" of fragrant greenery from the same bushes. When cutting plants, you should always leave 3-4 pairs of leaves so that new branches with delicate leaves grow quickly from their sinuses. After cutting, the plants are fed, and, after 2-3 weeks, you can proceed to the next cutting, because even more numerous stepchildren will appear from all sinuses.

You need to dry in very thin bundles in the shade (I hang the bundles on the second floor of the house, where it is well ventilated). When dried in the sun, the color, unique aroma and taste of basil are lost. Then, after preliminary drying, I cut the grass and put it in cotton bags. It is optimal, of course, to immediately carry out the final drying of the plant, grind it and pack it in an airtight container.

Previously, I did just that, carrying out the final drying on a warm couch. Now, unfortunately, I don't have such conditions in my garden house, so I put bags of grass in a city apartment, and they lie in the closet until the heating is turned on. As soon as the heating was turned on, I kept it for three weeks, during which the plants would completely dry out, and then I immediately turn it into powder.

If you try to grind the plants without such dryness, then nothing will come of it. No matter how dry the raw materials may seem, the air humidity in our late summer - early autumn is too high, and it will not be possible to grind it, even using all the advantages of modern technology. The meat grinder will fail, and you will waste a lot of energy in vain, because, in general, this task is not at all easy.

So, your raw material is ready, and you can start grinding. It is better to use an electric meat grinder (not everyone can do this manually, and it will take a lot of time). In this case, you need to act very carefully.

Lay the raw materials in very small batches, without pressing it, but simply falling asleep, otherwise the meat grinder will periodically clog up, and you will curse the day and hour when you decided to get the seasoning. The next step is the final grinding in a coffee grinder, preferably also electric. Although, in the main part of the dishes, you can completely add the powder, which turned out after coarse grinding in a meat grinder.

Transplanting basil from the garden to the windowsill

If by the fall there are large healthy basil plants on the site, which were not allowed to go on to flowering with regular cutting, they can be carefully transplanted into a flower pot with a large lump of earth in order to have fresh greens in autumn and winter. After transplanting, the plants are partially cut off, leaving 2-3 fresh leaves on each of the shoots, placed in a bright place, and periodically watered.

Basil varieties

Basil varieties differ not only in appearance, primarily in the color of the leaves, but also in aroma.

Yerevan - leaves purple or red-purple, allspice aroma.

Baku - brownish-purple leaves, clove-mint aroma.

Spoon - shaped - leaves are light green, the aroma of cloves and bay leaves.

Lemon - light green leaves, lemon balm scent.