In my eagerness to grow things, I struggle with stewarding my plants to be healthy sizes. I recently learned that the cuttings of a basil plant will most certainly root in a water jar, but I have not figured out what to do with them after that. Around and around they grow till the roots are so wound up the jar becomes packed with roots. The other end of the plant seemed healthy and was even blooming, but this root situation seemed wrong.
These types of situations result from the limitations of my current agricultural knowledge, and in particular my lack of knowledge about pruning and harvesting. In the specific instance of the basil plant, I was so elated by my ability to keep growing it that I overlooked my other responsibilities of harvesting and pruning it.
I generally understand that once an herb plant flowers the leaves will no longer have the rich taste they had earlier on in the plants life cycle. That is why it is important to harvest the leaves when they first mature, but how many times can you cut the leaves off a basil plant before it dies? Since I am growing indoors in artificial environments with consistent temperatures, water, and artificial light, I feel like I should be able to grow and shape my basil plants in perpetuity. However, there are still responsibilities that go along with this type of cultivation.
First, I have learned that I must keep the plant pruned back to an appropriate size suited to the vessel I am growing each of them in. I can do this by trimming the basil at a leaf node to encourage it to grow more stout and bushy instead of just tall. In doing this trimming, I must remember to not take more than 1/3 of the plant from the top or else it may struggle to regenerate its self.
Basil grows fast and resiliently in my apartment, so it does require attention every few days once the plant is matured. The other struggle is in figuring out what to do with so much basil, but that is all part of the joy of making food.
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