A tip for looking after your Basil Bush

In the post “Herb Garden – Before and After“, the herb/bush on the very right hand-side of the herb garden (excluding the lavender bush next to the wall) is my Basil tree. It is one of the best growing herbs I have in my herb garden, so I thought I would share something with you that I recently learned.

With any type of herb, if it starts to flower, you MUST prune/cut off the flower as soon as you can. Otherwise your herb will start to taste a bit “woody”.

I didn’t know that, and thought that the Basil flowers were a great looking addition to my herb garden. But I did notice that the Basil leaves were starting to taste very “plant-like”. So, I cut the bush back quite a bit, and pruned every flower, nipping it quite low down on the branch. I noticed that the Basil flowers (at least on my Basil tree) grow like a trident, so I cut the flowers off just below the start of “trident”.

After a couple of weeks, my Basil leaves were starting to taste quite good again.

Which is a good, thing, considering my Italian wife loves cooking with Basil.