Skip to main content

Make your BASIL plants live forever?

...In a way you can!
I'll try to kept it as simple as possible (not an easy task being a plant biologist myself!), but I can tell you that with a small trick you can have fresh basil all over the year (NO growth hormones needed)!!!

 Couple of months ago I posted pics of my balcony-based garden with my beloved sweet basil (I'm not overdoing with compliments, the variety of basil I love most is the sweet basil indeed). 
All plants grew, survived my absence during holidays (they have experienced a pretty prolonged drought this year) and set new leaves and incredibly tiny fruits (tomatoes and strawberries)... 
Expectedly, but still unfortunately, after a while (also because they are confined in relatively small pots, with poor or no fertilization) they started senescing (ageing).

I know my basil will not live forever in such a pot and very likely it won't survive the cold winter outside.... but I have no space to bring it inside given its current size!!!

Here what I did to prepare my fall/winter indoor basil cultivation: 

- I cut a stem with few leaves (the closer to the apex the better). DO NOT use lignified tissues!


- I removed the lower leaves (the ones close to the arrow in the picture) without damaging the stem and put the cuttings in a cup or glass with water (that I changed daily!)

If your cuttings are fine they'll stay green, they'll be turgid and they'll keep setting leaves!!!

Usually 10 days up to 3 weeks after, you will have new roots growing (pink arrow)




- In few days I'll transfer the cuttings without damaging the roots in new pots and I'll let them recover for a couple of weeks before start collecting leaves again!
Etichette:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts

Card making and papercraft magazines

Last month I had the chance to get, for the first time, a couple of Cardmaking & papercraft  magazines: Papercraft Inspirations and Make Christmas card magazine. Papercraft Inspiration December issue had a Christmas window build-a-scene embossing folder and stamp free gift, as well as  free festive papers . Make Christmas cards was offering:  2 embossing folder borders ,  13 stylish stamps ,  32 Christmas papers ,  12 découpage sheets ,  117 toppers & motifs and  73 festive greetings. Here you have some of the cards and tags I've made with the magazines' gifts All cards have been donated to hospitals 
Post a Comment
Read more

One more way to combine soy wax and gel!

The followings are all two-layered candles with the bottom layer made of gel and the upper part made of soy wax . Why combining the two of them? Because gel is transparent and allows you to embed objects   and soy wax   has an incredible  scent   throw and a long burning time ! Few simple rules for embedding objects: ideally they should be non flammable (like glass animals, shells or stones)! ...but if you do not exaggerate with the amount, you also can potentially use cinnamon sticks, dried flowers etc... To be on the safe side: if you use flammable objects I'd anyway suggest you to pour the thinnest layer of gel as possible (just to cover the embeds) and avoid burning this layer. And remember: never ever leave lit candles unattended! Let yourself be inspired and give it a try! Gel embeddings: glitters (blue candle) or sea shells (peach candle). Soy wax: caramel-scented.   G el embeddings: cinnamon sticks G el embeddings: cinnamon sticks (left) or star
Post a Comment
Read more