Sprouting Basil: A great way to start a garden!

I have tried growing basil from seeds, I have tried growing a basil plant from the store, and I have tried growing the basil from the grocery stores. No matter what I do, it seems that I manage to kill just about everything in our garden, which is especially frustrating because my parents are so good at growing things, so you would think that my green thumb would be genetic. Some of the problem has to do with living in an apartment, so everything that I do is container gardening, but it shouldn't be that hard. I decided to try sprouting basil from clippings to grow a basil plant, and I was very surprised by the results. I put up a post on one of the facebook trading groups in the area that I was looking for clippings, and I immediately had several replies from people who had huge herb gardens. I guess growing plants is only hard for some of us :) . I took some clippings, and then I put them in water. I have heard that adding a growth stimulant is not necessary, but I figured that with my luck that I would need all of the help that I could get. I changed the water every day, and since I do not have a place with great sun exposure indoors, I put the clippings under my under-cabinet lighting in my kitchen. After about two weeks, I lost two of the four, but this is what I found.

Roots started to grow very quickly, and three days later were noticeably longer.

 

Finally,at three weeks, it was time to plant.

I planted the basil, and I put it in a very sunny location, as that is what I had read would be best for the plant. After the first day, it was looking a bit droopy, so I put it on the other side of our planter box so that it would not get much, if any, direct sunlight. After that, it started to do very well, and get much bigger. After a couple of weeks, some bugs began to eat is at night. Over two weeks, I tried a soap water spray, a small cup of beer embedded in the dirt (thinking that it might be snails), garlic, and finally an onion top. I never found out what was eating the plant, but the top of the onion near the base of the plant seemed to be enough to keep whatever it was from coming back to the plant.

Here are my clippings after about two months, still with holes in them from the bugs, but the leaves never died, even though they were half gone.









Because I had such luck with the clippings, I put up another request for more basil clippings. Craigslist or even just walking around the neighborhood would have been another option, but since it worked the first time, I decided to post again on Facebook. I had several people who offered their clippings, and so I started the process again. After a few months, this is what I have.

This is several basil plants, and there are a couple in the back that seem to have died, but I have left the stems there as a form of support for the basil, as it seems to like resting on the sticks. I have been trying to prune these every week or two to get the plant to fill out more, and I will be moving these to another planter with more space in the next couple of weeks, in the hopes of getting the plants to spread out more. I am very excited that these plants have grown so well, and I would definitely recommend growing from clippings to anyone who is looking to start an herb garden, especially people who want a fast growth, or a smaller chance of murdering their plants.