Grab your snips and learn how to prune basil to delay flowering and encourage more flavorful leaves to grow.
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Harvesting and pruning basil are similar processes but are done for different purposes.
However, the leaves start to get a bitter flavor once blooming begins.
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Growth of new tender leaves also slows once the plant has flowered.
At this point most energy goes to flowering and seed production.
By pruning the flowers off, you disrupt that cycle, keeping the plant in vegetative mode.
Credit:Marty Baldwin
It will then keep putting out tasty leaves a little longer before trying to make more flowers.
If you’re growing an ornamental basil like Aromatto, you may wish to let some of it flower.
Pruning spurs new, tender stems and more leaves to grow.
Just aspruning a shrubresults in a more densely formed, shapely plant, pruning basil accomplishes the same.
In fact, if you bought an established basil plant from the greenhouse, check it out.
You might see a couple old healed-over pruning marks.
When pruned, one stem grows into two.
Basil is anherb that roots very easily in a glass of wateror moist potting soil.
It’s a great way to keep yourself supplied with young basil plants.
Here’s how to do it.
That’s it; you’ve pruned your basil.
Side branches can be pruned as well.
Providing an optimum environment will keep your basil growing lots of tasty leaves.
Watering
Basil likes consistent moisture.
And whenplanting basilin a garden bed, choose companion plants that also appreciate plenty of water.
Light
Basil does best in full sun.
Outdoors, basil likes at least six hours per day of sunshine.
Basil is a vigorous grower in the warm months, and will quickly pump out new leaves after pruning.
That said, avoid pruning the plant by more than 1/3.
