Post by @simonakeroydgardener

If you’ve ever bought a basil plant from the supermarket and wondered why it died so soon after your purchase, this is the reason. Unfortunately, basil plants bought from the supermarket are crammed full with loads and loads of basil plants. The reason for doing this is so that the plant appears much bushier and healthy than it really is. The pots are tiny and really only big enough for one plant each. However, the upside of this is that you get loads of plants for the price of one plant. So when you get your basil plant home, you can very carefully take it out of its pot and pull apart the root ball. Ideally you could pull them into individual plants although you will find you’ve got more than you know what to do with. Alternatively, you can just gently pull the rootball apart into small sections with four or five seedlings in each one. Pot these sections up into individual pots. Once potted up, you will find these original basil plants are leggy because they were all crammed together in one tiny pot and were struggling for the light. For this reason I would suggest you pinch back the shoots to create a bushier plant. Cut about halfway down the main stem to a lower shoot. Keep your basil plants indoors on a warm windowsill. I would suggest your kitchen windowsill and hopefully very soon the plants will start to grow and bush out and you will never have to buy basil ever again because they are very easy to keep propagating and getting more free plants. Happy gardening and enjoy your basil infused pesto. PS, soon I will show you how to make a rocket-infused pesto 😍