Friday, February 7, 2014

Planting My Basil

Two years ago, I bought a basil plant from a garden show. I took it home and forgot about it. Since the plant was growing more and more stems and leaves, Inay transplanted it from its plastic planter to our backyard. And forgot about it, too.

Fast forward to 2014. I noticed that my basil has grown bushy, overgrown, and woody at the bottom. The tops were flowering which I thought was a good sign...it's not. Turns out, you need to cut or pinch off the basil flowers. When a basil is flowering, it means that it is in reproduction stage which also means it's not developing more leaves. And if you're a cook, or a pesto maker, you need tons of leaves, not flowers. 

Since I'm starting gardening this year, I decided to cultivate this herb. I Googled and learned much on how to take care of basil. Basil can be propagated via seeds or cuttings. I chose the latter since it's free, obviously. I cut basil stems (2 inches or so), removed the leaves at the bottom of the stems and placed them in a clear jar with clean water. I placed the jar on our kitchen sill where there is moderate sunlight.

After nine days, the cuttings grew their first roots. I was excited! After checking out the jar every day, here's the promise of new basil plants. I thought I would fail in my first attempt in planting.




I let them grow more roots before transplanting them. After four more days since the first roots, here's a picture of those basil cuttings.




I used the empty cups of instant noodles and milk cans as the basil's first home in soil.




Within two weeks, I have small basil plants ready to grow. Come to think of it, if you're on your two-week wait, this can be a good activity for you to try to take your mind off your TTC journey.



 
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