Maintain and harvest basil
For years, I have always managed to make my basil from the supermarket within a week to kill. Thanks to the advice of a market woman, he now survives much longer and I finally know how to harvest the leaves properly.
Do not plunder plants
Before I bought my first basil pot on the market and learned about basil, I plucked the leaves one at a time from the stems. Not a good idea, as I learned at the vegetable stall. The leaves do not grow then. For the basil, the upper part of the stem is cut off over a leafy shoot. At the interface, new shoots grow. However, one should not plunder too many leaves. I sometimes overdone it a bit and the plant then came in quickly. No wonder, considering that the pots in the supermarket are sometimes stored in the cold store. Another mistake was that I harvested young shoots. It is better to give them time to grow and harvest the older stems.
Daily pouring
For the shelf life of basil it does not matter if it was bought at the market or in a supermarket. Decisive for the survival of the plant was the daily harvesting as well as the right harvest. Basil needs water daily, preferably from below. Even after I knew how to harvest basil, I managed to ruin it in no time. The plant is simply dried up for me. If you want, you can also transplant the basil into a larger pot. The roots need space. Basil is a Mediterranean plant and loves warm and sunny. So she needs a place in the sun. In winter, all these tips use but little, because the plant is then too cold and it gets too little light.
