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basil_transplant_DIYSave the basil!  If you want to have delicious fresh basil all winter long, it is time for transplanting basil indoors.

I love fresh basil.   Once I figured out that fresh basil is completely different (and by different I mean tastes and smells much better) from the dried stuff there was no going back to the crumbly stuff in a bottle.  I must have fresh basil in my kitchen year round.

I learned about transplanting basil indoors last year for the first time.  I had some wins and losses.  I hope my experience will help you have a big win with your basil.

I read up on the subject and found there were basically two ways  for transplanting basil indoors (or dividing and replanting outdoors):

1.  Dip cuttings in root powder and plant according to the bottle directions

2. Stick basil cuttings in a cup of water and hope they form roots, no root powder needed. (This seemed so unlikely, it made me chuckle when I read it.)

The first thing I did was uproot my entire basil plant, drop it into a big bucket and bring it into the kitchen.

basilbucket

Of course I didn’t use the entire plant for cuttings.  I promise to show you what else I did with it next week. 🙂

I  made cuttings, dipped them in root powder and planted them according to the directions on the bottle of root powder.

rootpowderdipped

Sorry, I know this isn’t a great pic, but I’m not that good at any kind of selfie, including’ hand modeling’.

It was so cute when I finished planting the pot that I sat it on my dining room table and felt very satisfied and proud.

basil_table

I also had a few cutting left over, so I stuck them in a ceramic mug, suspended with plastic wrap that had a hole in it to allow the stems to dangle in the water.  This I placed in my laundry room which is as sunny as my dining area.  It was not as cute and so I just placed ‘out of the way’.

Both sets of cuttings went a bit shocky, but recovered after a few days.  Then after two weeks I could see a change taking place.  The potted basil was failing.  It was failing to thrive despite the sun, water and vocal encouragement I gave it. 🙁

basil_winner

The cuttings in the mug in the laundry room seemed to be doing fine, though I hadn’t detected any roots.  Thinking that perhaps the ‘mugged’ basil was getting more sun, I moved the pot in by it.  As you can see from the picture, it was beginning to lose leaves and go brown.  And then in a few days it just died.  Oh crumb.

However, the cuttings in the mug, got roots and I transferred the whole thing to a prettier vase and took it into my kitchen windowsill.  Now once it got roots I could have planted it in a pot, but it seemed happy enough and I had a supply of fresh basil all winter. Yay!

So my suggestion for transplanting basil indoors is obvious.  Go with the cheap and implausible method.

 Suspend the cuttings in a mug or vase and change out the water twice a week and  then when it has some good little roots either transfer to a pot with soil or  a larger vase and keep it in a warm, sunny place.  Enjoy! –Laura

Oh!  And if you missed it, I created this little self-watering planter for a basil earlier this summer.  Check out the post for the self-watering planter here.

happy_basil

Further inspirations:

Bonnie Plants

How to propagate basil video

2 Comments

  1. Pingback: DIY Gardening #761

  2. Pingback: Grow Your Own Indoor Basil Garden: A Simple Guide

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