It's So Simple To Grow More Basil Than You Can Imagine From Just One Store-Bought Plant

The way to grow a seemingly endless supply of basil has nothing to do with the best fertilizer for basil plants, even if that's useful knowledge to have. In actuality, all you need for "forever" basil is one store-bought basil plant. You might be able to get away with a pack of fresh basil leaves from the supermarket, but this is a hit-or-miss proposition. Got some basil trimmings from a friend's healthy plant? That will do as well. What you're after are some basil cuttings that include a nice, lengthy piece of stem with developed nodes on them. Snip right below the nodes, go ahead and strip the cutting of any leaves besides those on the very top, and plop that trimming in some water. Within a couple of weeks, you'll have a cutting that's sprouted roots and is ready for either planting in a cute little windowsill pot or further hydroponic growth.

If you continually cycle the trimming, rooting, and growing basil, you will soon have a constant supply of the delicious, fragrant green leaves! Cuttings that have rooted well in soil and are starting to grow upward and sprout new leaves are hardy enough to put outside in warm weather. As they grow and become bushy, take new cuttings. Rinse and repeat, as the saying goes. You'll be rewarded with scads and scads of one of the most popular culinary herbs. Your only concern will be what to do with it all — more on that in a moment. Note that this works for all types of basil, including sweet basil, Thai basil, purple basil, and lemon basil.

Let's just put something out there: you don't have to make pesto with all your excess basil. No matter what the source, at the first mention of too much basil, folks will start mentioning pesto. Pesto is great! It's delicious! But people can only eat so much, and there are many, many other uses for your abundant basil. On a Reddit thread dedicated to the topic, we liked one suggestion: "Basil oil. It's amazing on so many things. As a finisher for: pizza, risotto, fish, mix with mayo for a nice basil mayo. Will last a few weeks in the fridge." We already have a killer recipe for creamy tomato soup finished with basil oil, so you might consider us biased.

Another Reddit thread provided even more fruitful (herb-ful?) inspo, including strawberry-basil lemonade (yum), green curry, and basil simple syrup for cocktails. Don't sleep on the delicious power of whole basil leaves, either: you've heard of Caprese salad, but what about another recipe we love, summer squash and basil burrata salad? In our eyes, it's hard to find one food as quintessentially "summery" as basil, so salads are a great choice for showcasing its freshness and bright green color. When you propagate basil by taking cuttings and rooting them constantly, you'll have nonstop basil for whatever purposes inspire and delight you. You can easily take clippings and gift them to friends and neighbors, who can, in turn, start their own leafy empires of continual basil. With a little know-how, you'll find that this herb is the ultimate in cost-efficiency and abundance.